The Health Blog

YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM: CELL EATERS

Imagine tiny eating machines slowly moving through your bloodstream, They send out a limblike projection (pseudopod) which acts like a “foot” to pull themselves forward, then push out another “foot” to pull themselves forward, and so on, as they crawl through body tissue in search of antigens. These specialized white blood cells are called phagocytes.

A phagocyte is a cell eater, a cell that literally eats other cells. Phagocytes engulf antigens and kill them with deadly poisons.

Neutrophils and monocyte/macrophages are both phagocytes. Of the approximately 7,000 white blood cells in a cubic millimeter of normal adult blood, about 62 percent are neutrophils, and 5.3 percent are monocytes. Neutrophils are mature phagocytes, ready to eat bacteria, viruses and other antigens. The immature monocytes, on the other hand, are not very effective: not yet.

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