Vaccines are the tugboats of preventive health. But do you know how vaccines work?
Back in 1976, Edward Jenner injected material from the cowpox virus into 8 years old boy with a hunch that this might protect him from the smallpox virus, which succeeded. To comprehend this we need to know how the immune system works against diseases.
When foreign microbes invade us it triggers the immune system with responses to identify and abolish them. Coughing, sneezing, inflammation, and fever are the signs that the immune response is working, which work to trap, deter, and get rid of bacteria. it also triggers adaptive immunity.
Cells like T cell and B cell are recruited to fight microbes and record information about them, but there is risk involved. The body takes time to respond to pathogens and build defenses, this is when the vaccines come in, which is injected to trigger the adaptive immune system.
- Live attenuated vaccines, made up of pathogens but weaker and tamer version.
- inactive vaccine, pathogens are killed and don’t create long-lasting immunity.
- Subunit vaccine, made with one part of a pathogen called an antigen and by further isolating specific components it can prompt specific responses.
Scientists are now developing DNA vaccines by isolating genes that make the specific antigens to trigger their immune response to specific pathogens. If this becomes a success, it can build effective treatments for invasive pathogens in the future.
Let’s hope for salubrious life.
Contents
MCQs
1. How do vaccines help your body fight diseases?
A. By making you stronger
B. By giving you a mild form of the disease
C. By causing a fever that kills the disease
D. By teaching your immune system to recognize and fight the disease
2. What part of the body does a vaccine work with to fight diseases?
A. Muscles
B. Bones
C. Immune system
D. Lungs
3. What are antibodies?
A. Tiny robots that fight viruses
B. Special cells that give you energy
C. Proteins that the immune system uses to fight off invaders
D. A type of medicine
4. Why do some vaccines require more than one dose?
A. To make them work faster
B. To make sure your immune system remembers the disease
C. Because the first dose doesn’t work
D. To make them less painful
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