Allergies: When the Immune System Backfires

Aktualisiert im Juni 2024

The human immune system is designed to fight infection, but sometimes this defence mechanism provokes allergic disorders. In this course, you will explore the similarities and differences of infections and allergies, and understand the intricacies of the immune system.

You will address the events, mishaps, and discoveries that have led to a common understanding of allergies today. You will explore different types of allergies, like food allergies and hayfever, as well as allergy symptoms, methods of diagnosis, and different allergy treatments with the support of case studies.


“Weeks”, “Chapters” and invitation to comment

Please note that this course was originally published by the University of Basel on FutureLearn. FutureLearn is a global platform offering online courses that encourage social learning, including discussions between learners. On FutureLearn, we added comment sections to certain steps and measured course durations in weeks rather than in chapters.

Here on Tales, we measure courses in chapters. These chapters are equivalent to the “weeks” on FutureLearn. So when you watch a video here and hear an educator talking about “weeks”, you’ll know that this was because the videos were geared towards FutureLearn’s set-up.

Another difference to FutureLearn is the comment option. The educators in the videos will sometimes invite you to discuss something in the comments section. If you don’t see a comment option here on Tales, then the course is not open to comments at this moment in time. But for certain periods of time announced in advance, this course will be open to comments.

The good news is that either way, you can freely access the course and all of its contents at any time. If the comment section is not open, why not write down your comments as you go through the course? That way you can keep track of how your knowledge changes. And should you be able to participate in one of the authors’ face-to-face courses, you can then refer back to your comments and discuss them with your peers.

Lizenz

University of Basel

Autor:innen
author

Andreas J. Bircher

Head of Allergology 1991 - 2018 University Hospital Basel Professor emeritus for Allergology University of Basel, Switzerland Adjunct Professor Faculty of biomedical sciences USI Lugano, Switzerland