About the authors:

The authors of this amazing book are Nikitha, Sneha, and Ayra. They are part of the Biomed program at Round Rock High School. They love learning about how the body is impacted by various diseases and want to share this valuable information with others.

Preview audio:

storyj.mp/ai4rrngg8z34

Jeff went to Coachella and came home feeling very sick :(

When a person gets sick, their immune system works to make them feel better.

Let's zoom into Jeff's immune system and see what is happening in his body!

When a pathogen enters your body, you get sick. While Jeff was at Coachella, he was exposed to many germs and a pathogen invaded his body .

The first line of defense in Jeff's body is his skin and nose hair, also known as nonspecific defenses. His skin protects him from microbes and his nose hair stops dangerous particles from entering his body.

However, this is not always enough to protect the body, so the immune system has to turn to the third line of defense, the specific defenses.

These defenses are called specific because they create weapons to fight a specific type of pathogen, unlike the nonspecific defenses that use the same method to fight every disease.

In his immune system, Jeff carries white blood cells just as each and everyone of us. We have two types of white blood cells: Lymphocytes and Phagocytes. B cells and T cells are the lymphocytes in the immune system.