Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) is a genetic disorder with a severe immunodeficiency case and characterized by complete inability of the adaptive immune system to maintain the immune response in the body. It is called severe because it is fatal, typically due to the absent of T or/and B lymphocytes. Some people give a name of "bubble boy" disease, as the patients might need a complete "clinical isolation" to prevent any lethal infection. I believe we could easily imagine a person rolling inside a huge plastic bubble, since there are quite some adds using it.
Now the question is, why do I discuss it?
Well, I had a journal club in the lab today, and though they spoke in mostly in-understandable Japanese, my eyes landed on as text on the paper "X-linked SCID (X-SCID) mice". If you work in animal or cells or genetic research, I assume you understand that the X-linked means the genetic defect is linked or occur in the X chromosome, and as a note, SCIDs are mostly X-linked. If you ever learned about genetic even just a little bit, you would understand that The incidence of X-SCID is 3X higher in males than females, due to the fact that male on has 1 "X"-chromosome, meanwhile female has 2 "X"-chromosomes.
Then, it's definitely a horrible condition which better never occur in the beginning, isn't it?!
Well, indeed it is not to ever happened on people. However in term of medical research, X-SCID animals are extensively used as hosts for normal and malignant tissue transplant. Malignant in this term are mostly related to tumor and cancer cells. Those X-SCID animals has low or even no rejection reaction towards the transplant due to the weak or nearly no immune response.
I would like to discuss more about it, but since this is my first quite-scientifiic-post, I don't want to complicate it.
By any cases, if you are interested a bit more, you can try reading some of these pages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_combined_immunodeficiency
https://www.inkling.com/read/janeways-immunobiology-kenneth-murphy-8th/chapter-5/case-5
http://download.cell.com/cell-reports/pdf/PIIS2211124712002343.pdf?intermediate=true
First comment alias pertamaX :D
ReplyDeleteDo not hesitate to be more specific, flo.
People will ask, and that's how they learn :)
It was meant to be a teaser hehehehe
ReplyDeleteNah, I was actually haven't finished reading my paper but too lazy to stay longer in the lab hahahaha :d