SSS 2011-11-15

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

 

I've always thought that when I get a fever, it's my body trying to make things uncomfortable for the invading pathogen. And that's often true—higher temperatures can inhibit¹ the bad guys' ability to replicate². But my fever may actually be a one-two-punch. In addition to slowing down the invader³, the heat helps the immune system recruit more troops for a counter-attack. That finding appears in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology. 

 

Researchers warmed up one group of mice to body temperatures of about 103 degrees Fahrenheit⁴. They left another group at normal core temperature—about the same as ours. Then they injected both groups of mice with an antigen, a substance that attracts the attention of the immune system.

 

Blood samples taken three days later revealed that the feverish⁵ mice had nearly twice as many killer⁶ T cells: the kind of immune cells that can hunt down infected cells or tumor⁷ cells, and slaughter⁸ them.

 

So when you're sick and you get the chills, the authors say, your body may be trying to tell you to hop⁹ under some blankets. Lie down, warm up and send a message. The heat is on.

 

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.

分享到：