Talk:Immune system

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Immune system is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on March 1, 2007, and on December 30, 2020.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
November 6, 2006	Peer review	Reviewed
January 9, 2007	Featured article candidate	Promoted

Current status: Featured article

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Ed Yong (September 2017). "Yo contengo multitudes. (in English) I Contain Multitudes ISBN 978-84-9992-766-4, page 106". PenguinRandom House Grupo Editorial, S.A.U. Retrieved 29 December 2018. Mientras escribo esto, Wikipedia todavía define el sistema inmunitario como «un sistema de estructuras y procesos biológicos dentro de un organismo que protege contra la enfermedad». [...] Sin embargo, para muchos científicos, la protección contra los patógenos es solo una ventaja adicional. La función principal del sistema inmunitario es administrar nuestras relaciones con los microbios residentes en nosotros.

Peripheral immune system

Can we add a mention in this article of the peripheral immune system--or create an article for this? 76.190.213.189 (talk) 02:34, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Total mass, number, and distribution of immune cells in the human bod

While the recently added Sender et al. citation was removed for lack of context, the quantitative estimates of the immune system in that paper warrant brief mention to provide readers intuitive insight. Specifically, the cited paper calculates the human immune system contains approximately 1.8 trillion cells, dwarfing the ~100 billion neurons in the brain nearly 15-fold. Additionally, at an estimated 1.2 kg, the immune system weighs 3-5 times more than an average adult heart (250-350 grams). As these facts illustrate the immune system's considerable magnitude relative to other organs, they impart useful perspective for general readers. Thus a pared down summary contextualizing these cell count and weight comparisons could suitably supplement the article, without diving into excessive detail tangential to the core content. LittleHow (talk) 14:10, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It was an interesting paper but as it is a primary source it not WP:MEDRS compliant. We need to wait for this to be discussed in a review article in an established journal. Graham Beards (talk) 14:53, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Claims made without evidence

There are about 20 claims made with out evidence in the first two paragraphs.

It would be useful to include specific experiments that have been run that led to these assumptions. 75.70.178.222 (talk) 22:05, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See MOS:LEADCITE. As the top paragraphs are a summary of the article, citations are often redundant as the statements are repeated with citations in he article. Graham Beards (talk) 07:05, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Who coined the term? When did it come into popular use?

"Immunity" and "immune" come from the latin "immunis" meaning "free from/exempt from taxes (in Roman times)".

The very outset of this article states "immunity is the state of being insusceptible or resistant to a noxious agent or process". "Immune" does not mean "resistant" it means "free from" or "exempt from". There is basically a downwards spiral on wikipedia describing "Immune" "immunity" "immunize" in increasingly weaker terms such as "fortify", "resistant", or "protect". Somewhere it should be explained how there came to be this disconnect in meaning between "immune system" or "immunity" in the medical sense meaning "protect" or "resistant to" rather than "free from" or "exempt from" which is the plain English meaning of "immune". 27.32.165.42 (talk) 18:31, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Vitamin D - contradictory?

The section on Vitamin is unclear. What is it trying to say? It seems to contradict itself and the use of 'although' seems clumsy. "Although early cellular studies suggested vitamin D might influence immune responses, more recent large-scale clinical trials and meta-analyses (2022–2024) have found that vitamin D supplementation can reduce the risk and severity of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, and may modestly reduce the incidence of acute respiratory tract infections and improve tuberculosis outcomes. A 2011 United States Institute of Medicine report stated that "outcomes related to ... immune functioning and autoimmune disorders, and infections ... could not be linked reliably with calcium or vitamin D intake and were often conflicting." Burraron (talk) 15:02, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]