JW 29 years of age presents in late October to the immunizat

JW, 29 years of age, presents in late October to the immunization clinic, accompanied by her 2-month-old daughter and her son, who turned 6 years old in September. JW reports that they all need shots.

JW says she has heard that “you can get chickenpox from the vaccination shot.” How should the provider respond to this comment?

Solution

chickenpox vaccines are attenuated vaccines. attenuated vaccines are less virulent than the viruses causing the disease. in most of the cases, the vaccine does not produce any sde effects. but in some cases, it may cause mild form of disease, which is not at all dangerous. the vaccine administration results in production of antibodies in the body against that specific virus so that the memory cells kill the virus upon next encounter. vaccination ensures safety against that specific virus.

Whenever a foreign particle (maybe a virus, bacteria, fungi etc.) enters human body, our body secretes antibodies against that specific foreign particle (also called antigen). However, the secretion of antibodies for the first time is a time taking process, i.e, it may take days to week to secrete antibodies. After secretion, antibodies bind to antigens to induce several immune responses like phagocytosis, cell killing etc.

The antibodies are secreted by B-cells. Some B-cells remain as memory B-cells. After the removal of antigens from our body, antibodies will be degraded. But however, the memory cells remain for years.

Therefore, during the subsequent encounter of the same foreign particle, the memory B-cells immediately get activated and secrete antibodies to destroy. This is called secondary immune response.

Therefore, during the first encounter of any pathogen, the primary immune response is slower and takes much time to defend. During the second or any subsequent encounters, the pathogen will be cleared immediately.

In vaccination, we are injecting attenuated virus. Attenuated virus contains antigenic particles similar to live virus, but they weakened. They cannot induce disease. Even if they induce, it would be a very mild form of the disease. The injection of attenuated virus induces formation of antibodies as well as memory B-cells against that specific virus. So, now our body contains preplanned memory B-cells against that specific virus. So, next time, the live virus cannot cause disease since the memory cells immediately destroy them.

This is the concept of vaccination.