Unit 3.7 - Immunisation Flashcards
What do vaccines contain?
Inactivated pathogen toxins, dead pathogens, parts of pathogens and weekend pathogens
What is the vaccine mixed with that enhances the immune response?
Antigens are usually mixed with an adjuvant when producing the vaccine
What is adjuvant?
A substance that makes a vaccine more affective, so enhancing the immune response
When does herd immunity occur?
When a large percentage of the population are immunised
Describe the importance of herd immunity in infectious disease control
It is important in reducing the spread of diseases and in protecting vulnerable and non vaccinated individuals
How can active immunity be developed? And what does this lead to?
By vaccination with antigens from infectious pathogens, so creating memory cells
Leads to immunological memory
How are non immune individuals protected?
Due to a lower chance of them coming into contact with infected individuals
What is a heard immunity threshold?
The percentage of a Muinn individuals in a population above which are disease no longer managers to persist
What does the herd immunity threshold depend on
Type of disease
The efficacy of the vaccine
The density of the population
What are mass vaccination programmes designed to do?
Establish herd immunity to a disease
What are the difficulties in establishing widespread vaccination?
In a developing world malnutrition, poverty and rejection of the vaccine by a percentage of the population in the developed world
How do some pathogens avoid the effect of the immunological memory (antigenic variation)?
Some pathogens can change their antigens
Which means memory cells are not effective against them
Talk about influenza?
Antigenic variation occurs in the influenza virus explaining why it remains a major public health concern and why individuals who are at risk require to be vaccinated every year
