Question: what other blood cells are there that help us to fight bacteria?

Hannah Greenwood answered on 23 Jun 2015:

There are lots of different types of cells and, believe it or not, we’re still finding new types! When we get an infection, our whole immune system gets involved, it just takes longer for some parts to get involved than others.

Non-specific immunity is the half of our immune system that recognises foreign material (bacteria, viruses etc.) based on the expression of certain conserved surface proteins (meaning that the bacteria needs these proteins on the cell surface for survival and therefore the protein structure hasn’t been altered (mutated) during evolution) . Some examples of cells that recognise bacteria in this way are our neutrophils (the cells I work on) and macrophages. This kind of immunity is immediate gives us protection straight away.

The other type of immunity is called specific immunity, this means that when our immune cells recognise foreign material (get activated) they produce antibodies to help us fight the infection but they get the chance to make those antibodies more effective once they’ve been activated. Cells of this type are called B cells, and plasma cells (the antibody producing ones). This kind of immunity takes time but by having both specific and non-specific immunity, we have protection all the of the time. When we first encounter a pathogen, we get general protection (non-specific) straight away but then after a couple of days we get very specific protection from our B cells (specific immunity).

I hope this makes sense, it’s a lot of information condensed into three very short paragraphs!