Question: are some people's white blood cells more resistant to pathogens, and if so, would we be able to inject humans wit the stronger ones?

Reka Nagy answered on 8 Jan 2019:

That’s a great question and I am not sure I (or science) knows the answer to that one!

There have been studies that wanted to see whether injecting people who have low white blood cell counts, with white blood cells, would help them fight infections better. They found that this reduced the occurrence of bacterial and viral pathogens *in blood*, but did not make a difference when the infection was more localised – and white blood cell transfusions are not done routinely, currently.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if we could genetically modify white blood cells to be better at fighting off pathogens, and inject these into people – but I don’t think anyone’s done that research yet. Maybe it could be you who answers your own question eventually!