Some infectious bacteria like NTHI, which is responsible for conjunctivitis or "pink eye", middle ear infections and sinusitis, defend themselves from immune attack by appropriating the very molecules sent to destroy them.
It seems that hardly a month passes without a new account of how a strain of bacteria or other pathogen has developed a new trick to evade the immune defenses.
Our immune systems are on constant alert against pathogens such as bacteria that scavange any opportunity to invade and use our resources for their own purposes: this is the nature of the infection. As the first line of defense against such invasions, the immune system dispatches a group of host-derived molecules called antimicrobial peptides or AMP that seek and destroy the unwanted. AMP weapon "secret is its ability to push through the outer skin of the cells of bacteria, as it is very permeable.
Most times it just sits harmlessly NTHI in the upper respiratory tract, but occasionally becomes a more harmful form, which then leads to infections such as conjunctivitis, acute sinusitis "otitis media" (ear infection middle), and the complications of cystic fibrosis.
