Skip to main content
Search

Bacterial immunity

Published on December 31, 2025   38 min

Other Talks in the Series: The Immune System - Key Concepts and Questions

Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
Let me welcome you to this talk on bacterial immunity. I'm Thomas Wilkinson. I'm a professor of barrier immunity and infectious disease at Swansea University Medical School in the UK.
0:13
We will discuss bacterial immunity by focusing on seven key points shown here. Firstly, we'll focus on the importance of bacteria and bacterial disease, and then confirm the basic rules to understand immune responses to bacteria. We will refresh knowledge on the immune response in three phases and focus on important players to defend against bacteria. We organise the immune response into barriers, innate immunity and adaptive immunity. Then we will study and compare examples of immune responses to bacterial commensals and immune responses to bacterial pathogens. Finally, we will end with a summary, and provide disclosures and acknowledgements.
0:53
Before we start, it's also important to confirm that this talk is part of a larger collection of talks by experts across all disciplines. But I draw attention to the biomedical and life sciences collection, and within the microbiology and immunology sets.
1:09
Bacteria remain a substantial cause of mortality and morbidity across the globe. As an example, the global burden of disease studies have calculated global estimates of death due to bacterial pathogens. The study confirmed that 7.7 million deaths are attributable to 33 bacterial pathogens. The key infections they cause are lower respiratory infections, bloodstream infections and intra-abdominal infections of the 11 syndromes studied. The five major pathogens identified were: Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Streptococcus pneumoniae. But we should not forget Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which wasn't studied and already has a global strategy in place.

Quiz available with full talk access. Request Free Trial or Login.