Vaccines protect the body against diseases in one of three ways, weakened live organisms, killed organisms or by a toxoid method. The first method, with live viruses ensure against the disease, but the live organism will have been weakened to the point they will not cause the disease, but will be effective in causing antibodies against the disease to form. There may be a slight reaction to the vaccination such a slight temperature, mild headache, etc., but nothing more than that.
The killed vaccine will still work the same as the live organism works, but with less potential for after affects from the vaccine. The body will have the same resistant to the disease. Toxoid vaccines are vaccines against certain bacterial infections where the bacteria produces a toxin. This toxin introduced into the body is the catalyst for the immune system to produce antibodies against the disease. These usually require multiple doses to ensure against a lifetime of an immune response against the disease causing bacteria.
For a vaccines to be effective, they must be able to incite the body to produce antibodies; to activate a memory system within cells that will recall a previous form of the disease – or vaccination; to not cause the body to act against the vaccine and rid itself of its potency in resisting the disease; to continue this memory of a previous episode with the organism so as not to ever have the disease again.
Live vaccines will need only one injection, whereas toxoid vaccines will require at least two or three injections at spaced monthly intervals. Viral diseases, smallpox, poliomyelitis and measles vaccinations are the most successful of all vaccines. Tetanus and diphtheria and pertussis are bacterial diseases that the body can successfully be inoculated against. The type used is the Toxoid vaccine.
In children, the DTaP (diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis) vaccine is given to children and a booster Diptheria and tetanus given at age ten or twelve and every year thereafter for life. Children get these vaccinations routinely, although in the past years many parents have rebelled. The parents themselves are not old enough to remember when childhood diseases were major illness that killed many children each year.
Consequently, many of these diseases are making a comeback. Who under the age of fifty ever heard of whooping cough? Until recently that it when sporadically disease outbreaks will alert society about the necessity for vaccinations.
Presently in 2010, vaccines and methods of disease prevention is the talk of the medical community. Children are pretty well protected in the US, but the adult population may need innoculations against diptheria, measles, mumps, rubella, and tetanus. Also polio from time to time makes a comeback and if we are not careful, smallpox will once again be on the rise. Hepatitis is a newer disease that is preventable and so is influenza and pneumonia, to some extent.
