What part of body system does a virus affect?

Answer 1

It all depends on the kind of virus and the disease it may cause in you. Firstly a virus consists simply of an inner core of nucleic acid surrounded by one or two protective shells known as capsids, made of protein. The sole activity of a virus is to invade the cells of other organisms which they then take over to make copies of themselves and they can therefore spread to any part of a human's body.

Viruses can gain access to your body by all possible entry routes, such as being inhaled in droplets, swallowed in food and fluids, passed through punctured skin in the saliva of feeding insects or on infected needles. Virus are accepted by the mucus membranes membranes of genital tract during sexual intercourse, and by the conjunctive of the eye after accidental contamination.

Typically somebody with flu sneezes so someone near by the sneeze inhales the virus particle by breathing it in through their nose. Once in that new person the virus attaches itself to cells lining his sinuses in the nose. The host cells break and new viruses thus spread into the bloodstream and into the lungs. The person gets a runny nose because of lost cells lining his sinuses enabling fluid to flow into his nasal passages, and viruses in the fluid that drips down into his throat attack cells lining his throat, so he gets a sore throat. The viruses in his bloodstream attack his muscle cells and causes him to have muscle aches as viruses spread around his body he gets congested airways as well as headaches and feels groggy That is how the replication of the original virus that first got into his nose gives him flu.

But viruses that cause illness in people are grouped into more than 20 large families and viral infections range from the trivial, such as warts or the common cold and other minor respiratory tract infections to extremely serious diseases such as rabies and lassa fever and viral infections can also lead to the development of AIDS and to various cancers.

Our immune system deals fairly rapidly with most viruses. Each mechanism of your immune system may be involved in resisting a viral attack including white cells that engulf the viral particles and lymphocytes that produce antibodies against the virus or attack virally infected cells. This leads to recovery from most viral infections within a few days to weeks. With some viruses however the speed of the attack is such that serious damage or even death may happen before the immune system van adequately respond, as in the case of rabies and some cases of poliomyelitis. In other cases a virus is able to hide from the immune system so that the person's infection becomes chronic or recurrent, such as with many herpes virus infections like genital herpes and shingles and with viral Hepatitis B. The AIDS virus by weakening the immune system leaves your body open to many opportunist infections.

A much more effective area in the fight against viruses is immunisation. One viral disease (Smallpox) has already been eradicated worldwide through a coordinated vaccination programme. Highly effective vaccines are now also available to prevent many others including poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, yellow fever and rabies.