Immunity’s Eyes
Biologists reveal the proteins that first see dangerous microbes
By John Travis
About 3 weeks after a 4-year-old boy visited the emergency room for a nagging eye infection–which doctors easily cured–the boy’s mother arrived at the same Canadian hospital. She was infected with the same bacterium, though it had done much more than redden her eyes. She showed signs of shock: plummeting blood pressure and a racing heart.
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Physicians suspected sepsis, the destructive overreaction of the immune system to an overwhelming bacterial infection of the blood. They gave the woman massive doses of antibiotics, but it was too late. Just hours after arriving at the hospital, she died.