Principles of Immunisation Flashcards
What are the two types of immunity?
Adaptive
Innate
What is innate immunity?
First line defence from infection in a non-specific manner
What is adaptive immunity?
Highly specialised elimination of pathogens with the creation of an immunological memory
What are the two forms of adaptive immunity?
Active
Passive
What is active immunity?
Protection produced by your own immune system
What is passive immunity?
Immune response that involves antibodies that are obtained from outside the body
What are the two forms of active and passive immunity?
Natural
Artificial
What are examples of natural artificial active immunity?
Active natural immunity is infection or exposure
Active artificial immunity is immunisation vaccines
What are examples of natural and artificial passive immunity?
Natural passive immunity is mother passing on antibodies to baby
Artificial passive immunity is immunological therapy
Which of active and passive immunity are specific?
Both of them, being part of the adaptive immune system
What kind of adaptive immunity creates immunological memory?
Only active, not passive
What are advantages of passive immunity?
Gives immediate protection
Quick fix
What are disadvantages of passive immunity?
No immunological memory
Could lead to serum sickness (incoming antibody is recognised as a foreign antigen resulting in anaphylaxis)
What is an advantage of active immunity?
Long term immunity due to the creation of immunological memory
What is a disadvantage of active immunity?
No immediate effect
What does an immunological memory allow?
A larger, more effective and more precise response on re-exposure
What is vaccination?
Adminstration of antigenic material (a vaccine) to stimulate an individual’s immune system to develop adaptive immunity to the pathogen
What are common diseases that we vaccinate?
Measles
Mumps
Rebella
Polio
What are different kinds of vaccines?
Killed whole organism
Attenuated whole organism (mainly virsuses)
Subunit (recombinant proteins)
Toxoid (toxin treated with formalin)
What is a risk of using a killed whole organism as a vaccine?
Must be killed efffectively as any live virus can result in disease
What is an advantage and disadvantage of using an attenuated whole organism as a vaccine?
Very powerful and better than killed
Refrigeration required
What is an advantage and a disadvantage of using a subunit as a vaccine?
Safe
Not very immunogenic without an effective adjuvant
What is an adjuvant?
Enhances an antigen specific immune response
What is an attenuated whole organism?
Avirulent strain of target organism
What is the attenuation mechanism?
1) Pathogenic virus is isolated from patient and grown in human cultured cells
2) Cultured virus is used to infect monkeys
3) Virus acquires mutations to allow it to grow in monkey cells
4) Virus no longer grows in human cells and can be used as a vaccine
What do children have to protect them from common pathogens?
An immunisation schedule that lasts from birth until up to 18 years old
What are some vaccines that are apart of a child’s immunisation schedule?
Tetanus/polio at 2/4months
Influenza at 2/4 years
HPV at 13 years (females only)
Tetanus/polio at 13/18 years
Who are tuberculosis (BCG) and hepatisis B vaccines given to?
People at birth who have increased risk to exposure
What are examples of high risk groups?
Elderly (given influenza and shingles)
IV drug users (given hepatitis A/B)
Chronic medical conditions (given S pneumoniae and influenza)
Occupational risk (given hepatitis A/B and bacillus anthracis)
What are people from high risk groups given?
Additional vaccines
What kinds of vaccines are people who are travelling given?
Hepatitis A
Typhoid
Cholera
Yellow fever
Rabies
What are contraindications?
When using a vaccine can cause serious adverse reactions due to other medical conditions
What are the different kinds of contraindications?
Temporary
Permanent
What are examples of temporary contraindications?
Febrile illness (illness with unknown cause)
Pregnancy
What are examples of permanent contraindications?
Allergy
Immunocompromised
What is herd immunity?
People who are not vaccinated are less likely to become infected with a pathogen due to being less likely to come into contact with it
Who does herd immunity protect?
People who are unable to be vaccinated such as babies and pregnant woman
What are things that make a good vaccine?
Potent antibody response
Potent cytotoxic T cell response
Helper T cell response
Creation of immunological memory
What are some challenges facing vaccines?
Persistance (idealy vaccines should give life long protection)
Generation of memory cells
Protection of vulnerable groups
Antigenic shift and drift, strain diversity in general
Cold chain network
What is antigenic drift?
Mechanism for variation in viruses due to the accumulation of mutations within genes that code for the antigens
What is the purpose of the cold chain network?
Maintain the quality of the vaccine from the time of manufacture until the point of administration
What is a conjugate vaccine?
Conjugation of a carbohydrate to a protein carrier to make the antigen more effective
What would weaker antigens lead to?
Ineffective B cell priming
Why are new borns and the elderly vulnerable?
New borns are vulnerable due to having less memory B cells
The elderly are vulnerable due to having less B cells due to bone marrow having become fat over time
What is prominant research into vaccines at the moment?
Vaccines for cancers by targetting checkpoint inhibitors which can produce powerful anti-tumour responses
What is vaccinomics?
Individualised vaccinology
