If someone who's immune to say, chicken pox, and they donate blood, is the recipient also immunized?

Question

We learned a bit about the immune system in science class, and I asked this to the teacher, but I think he misunderstood me.

Supposing their blood types match, would the donor's memory B cells in the blood carry the antibodies for the chickenpox virus and be able to activate them in the recipient?

If not, why?

Thanks!

P.S. I'm in junior high. Please, no medical jargon. I got a headache trying to look this up on Google.

Answer 1

There are few good answers but they are missing the most important part - when you donate the blood it isn't kept whole or even transfused whole.  They spin it down to separate the cells & plasma.  So a single donation will have packed red blood cells, platelets and plasma.  There are other things that blood donations can be used for but that is beyond the scope of this venue.

Usually ones immunity is carried by the different types of white blood cells and the white blood cells are not used in a transfusion.  Therefore impossible for the recipient of a blood product to get any immunity against the chickenpox virus.

Answer 2

Well...i'm not sure but i guess the memory cells localise in the lymph nodes and the thymus gland so they aren't really in the external circulation much. If they were, I guess you'd have an active infection and you couldn't donate blood. No one has ever used your strategy as a means of vaccination so I guess it mustn't be possible....

having said that I'm not sure and your thinking is very very well developed and scientific . You'd make a good scientist rather than most people in science who are only technicians essentially carrying out western blots ad nauseum and never thinking independently........

Here's an interesting fact I only learned this year: you probably learn about maturation in the thymus gland and you probably hear the thymus shrivels up when you become an adult....but what I didn't know is this process of b cell maturation in the thymus largely occurs when you are in your mothers womb.....and if you are exposed to an infection in the womb( very unlikely) you can never mount an immune response to that bug!!!!!!!

Chickenpox: the virus creeps up your nerve body and lies dormant for years ( in an episome)....it then reactivates as shingles...so you wouldn't get eradication anyhow. If a person got chicken pox they do often infuse the antibodies to treat it though especially if the person was on immunosupression after a transplant

Good question:)

Answer 3

That's a great question! Good thinking, but no.

Answer 4

No.  The factors for the immunity are in other body tissues.  Even if there were factors in the donor's, there would not be enough to give the recipient immunity. The source has a fairly basic explanation.