Antibodies are found in every human being. These molecules are essential to life, and play a very important role in the immune system. Each person has approximately one to two billion different antibodies continuously flowing throughout the bloodstream, patrolling day and night to fight infections and diseases in their human host.
Antibodies are proteins with special shapes that recognize and bind to foreign substances, such as bacteria or viruses, surrounding them so that scavenger cells can destroy them and flush them out of the body.
The antibody molecule itself has two separable functions. First, antibodies have the unique ability to recognize and attach themselves to substances that cause disease. Second, in recognizing and attaching themselves to these pathogenic molecules, they act as markers, sending signals to other parts of the immune system to attack and eliminate the disease-associated substances.
