preview

Yellow Fever Vaccination Research Paper

Decent Essays

A vaccination is a treatment which makes the body stronger against a particular infection.
The body fights infection using the immune system, which is made up of millions of cells including T cells and B cells. An important feature of the immune system is that it is much stronger when fighting a disease which it has already fought against before. It has a memory.
Vaccination involves showing the immune system something which looks very similar to a particular virus or bacteria, which helps the immune system be stronger when it is fighting against the real infection.
What is the immune system?
The human immune system is a complex network of cells and organs that evolved to fight off infectious microbes. Much of the immune system’s work is carried …show more content…

The antigens in a vaccine are recognized by lymphocytes and lead to development of memory cells.
Vaccines teach the immune system by mimicking a natural infection.
After successful immunization with a vaccine, a person is exposed to the actual pathogen, the memory cells enable the immune system to mount a rapid, sustained immune response. This greatly reducing the complications associated with a natural infection.
For example, the yellow fever vaccine, first widely used in 1938, contains a weakened form of the virus that doesn’t cause disease or reproduce very well. Human macrophages can’t tell that the vaccine viruses are weakened, so they attack the viruses as if they were dangerous. In the lymph nodes, the macrophages present yellow fever antigen to T cells and B cells.
A response from yellow fever specific T cells is then activated. The B cells produce yellow fever antibodies. The weakened viruses in the vaccine are quickly eliminated by our immune system. The mock infection is cleared, and humans are left with a supply of memory T and B cells for future protection against yellow

Get Access