vaccines

During the ongoing battle to control and prevent death by infectious disease, scientists sought to focus on the role of our adaptive immune system and improve the effectiveness of this setup. They attempted to do this by developing our immunological memory. This relates to the concept that subsequent exposure to an identical strain of pathogen will result in an enhanced and longer lived memory response to reduce the symptoms and even at the best of times prevent infection. Vaccines lead to a term referred to as Active Immunity. This is when exposure to an antigen from infection or vaccine stimulates memory.
We are born with maternal antibodies, however, these soon diminish and we are rapidly exposed to the potential dangers of primary infections that occur in the outside world. In order to avoid the undesirable symptoms that follow an infection scientists began to develop and administer vaccinations.
Vaccinations have eradicated Smallpox. They have mercilessly forced Polio to the brink of extinction. Measles along with Hepatitis A and B are nowadays not usually a worry providing you are vaccinated. In contrast, successful vaccinations are yet to be developed for diseases such as AIDs and Herpes, to name a few. This is due to the fact that they are Chronic Infections. In these cases the pathogen is able to evade the Immune System or subvert it into making ineffective responses that never deal with the core problem.
There are three types of vaccine; Live, Killed and Subunit. In this essay the main focus will be regarding the Subunit form as it covers the topic of administrating Polysaccharide and Polysaccharide-Protein vaccines.

To avoid the problems seen with whole organism vaccines we use Subunit ones. Live vaccines are known not...

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...s just so great that it is best they are vaccinated anyway as one never knows how well an individual will react (Jackson et al., 2013).
What seems to be the main downfall of the polysaccharide vaccine is the length of time one is immune and protected for compared to that of the conjugate. One dose of PPSV23 given to a 65 year old didn’t produce life long immunity (over 10 years). As mentioned before, polysaccharides do don’t provide a good immune response. Conjugate vaccines triumph in their ability to elicit immunological memory and to reduce asymptomatic carriage of the bacteria, resulting in marked herd immunity. This is more beneficial to the community. It may lead to less treatment needed for specific diseases because if less people are becoming ill from it, what is the need? Attentions can then be focused to targeting other healthcare pressures.