The human body’s immune system can quickly track down and kill cells that don’t belong. Take certain kinds of bacteria: molecules on their surfaces flag them as foreign invaders, alerting the body’s defenders to the breach and drawing a full-fledged attack on anything waving that molecular flag. But sometimes the system mistakenly attacks the body’s own cells. The result is autoimmune disease , such as type 1 diabetes, in which the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas are attacked and destroyed by T cells. [More]
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