Biological Pathway
Immune Surveillance
Last updated
The immune system's continuous monitoring for infected, damaged or abnormal cells, and its removal of them. It spans the fast, non-specific innate response and the slower, targeted adaptive response carried by T and B cells. Records tagged here concern signals that alter that monitoring capacity; thymic peptides, for instance, act on the tissue where T cells mature.
Why it matters here
Immune claims are graded strictly here because a shift in a cell count or a marker on a lab report is not the same thing as fewer illnesses, and the two are rarely measured in the same study.
What it is not
Boosting immunity is not a coherent goal: the system is regulated rather than dialled, and both over- and under-activity cause disease. A rise in a cell count is a laboratory observation, not evidence of protection against any particular illness.
Also called
- immune surveillance
- immune competence
- immunity
Immune competence describes the capacity to respond, whereas surveillance is the ongoing activity itself; plain immunity is used loosely for both.
Compounds carrying this term
None on file yet. This term is in the controlled vocabulary but no compound record currently uses it — which is a statement about our coverage, not about the term.