By 2021, hundreds of millions of people will be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. The success of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign relies heavily on public confidence that the vaccine is not only effective but also safe. To build that trust, the medical and scientific communities are responsible for having difficult discussions with the general public about a significant portion of the people they experience. Temporary side effects From these vaccines.
I am an immunologist Those who study Basics of immune response to vaccination, Part of that responsibility lies with me.
Simply put, vaccination with these vaccines will make many feel cheesy for a few days. That’s probably a good thing, and it’s a much better prospect than long-term illness or death.
The “dirty little secret” of immunology
1989, immunologist Charles Jane Way Published the article Summarize the state of the field of immunology. By that time, immunologists had accepted that the immune response would begin when they encountered an exogenous “non-self” such as a bacterium, virus, or parasite.
Janeway suspected that there was much more to the story, and famously explained what he called “the dirty little secret of immunologists.” Your immune system does more than just react to foreign substances. It reacts to foreign objects that you feel are dangerous.
Thirty years later, immunologists now tell us whether your immune system uses a complex set of sensors and not only if something is a foreign body. Possible threats (if any) from microorganisms.. It can identify the difference between viruses like SARS-CoV-2 and parasites like tapeworms and activate and deal with special arms of the immune system. Those specific threats accordingly. You can do that too Monitor the level of tissue damage Caused by an intruder, it boosts the immune response accordingly.
By sensing the types of threats posed by microorganisms and the level of intensity of those threats, the immune system selects the appropriate set of responses and uses them correctly to pose a very real risk of immune overreaction. You can avoid it.
Adjuvants pose the risks we need
Vaccine Safe version of the pathogen against the patient’s immune system.. Your immune system remembers past encounters and reacts more efficiently if you look at the same pathogen again. However, it produces memory only if the vaccine is packed with enough warning signals to initiate a reliable immune response.
As a result, the need to detect danger before the immune system reacts is immediately very important (imagine when it begins to attack thousands of friendly bacteria in the gut!). , Very problematic.
The risk requirement means that the immune system is programmed to not respond unless a clear threat is identified. It also means that if I’m developing a vaccine, I have to convince your immune system that the vaccine itself is a threat worth taking seriously.
This can be achieved In several ways.. One is to inject a weakened version (what immunologists call attenuated) or a killed version of the pathogen. This approach has the advantage of appearing to look much like a “real” pathogen, causing many of the same warning signals, often resulting in strong, long-term immunity, as seen in polio vaccination. There are also risks. If the pathogen is not sufficiently weakened and the vaccine is deployed too quickly, it can unintentionally infect a large number of vaccinated people. In addition to this unacceptable human cost, the loss of confidence in the vaccine can lead to further distress as fewer people take other safer vaccines.
A safer approach is to use the individual components of the pathogen. It is harmless in itself, but it can train the immune system to recognize the real thing. However, these pathogens often do not contain the warning signals needed to stimulate a strong memory response. As a result, it needs to be supplemented with a synthetic danger signal that immunologists call “adjuvants.”
Adjuvants are safe but designed to cause inflammation
To make the vaccine more effective The entire lab has been dedicated to testing and development New Adjuvant.. Everything is designed for the same basic purpose-working the immune system in a way that maximizes response effectiveness and longevity. Doing so maximizes the number of people who will benefit from the vaccine and the length of time they are protected.
To do this, it utilizes the same sensors that the immune system uses to detect damage to active infections. That is, it stimulates an effective immune response while producing a temporary inflammatory effect.
At the cellular level, the vaccine causes inflammation at the injection site. Blood vessels in that area become a little more “leaky,” helping to mobilize immune cells into muscle tissue and causing the area to swell red. All of this initiates a full-blown immune response in nearby lymph nodes and progresses over several weeks.
Regarding symptoms, This can result in redness and swelling at the injection site, muscle stiffness and pain, tenderness and swelling of local lymph nodes, and fever (and generally associated with crappy feeling) if the vaccine is strong enough. There is sex.
This is the balance of vaccine design – minimizing them while maximizing protection and benefits Unpleasant but necessary side effects.. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have serious side effects – They do – But they are very rare. Two of the most discussed serious side effects, Anaphylaxis (Severe allergic reaction) and Guillain-Barré Syndrome (Nerve damage due to inflammation) occurs less than once in 500,000 times.
Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2
The initial data is The mRNA vaccine under development for SARS-CoV-2 is very effective – More than 90. This means that more than 9 out of 10 patients can stimulate a strong immune response with sufficient warning signals. This is a high number in all situations, suggesting that these vaccines are powerful.
Let’s clarify here. You should expect to feel pain at the injection site the day after you are vaccinated. Some redness and swelling are expected. You may also feel generally debilitated 1-2 days after vaccination. These are all normal, expected and intended.
The data is not finalized, More than 2% of Moderna vaccinated I have experienced what has been categorized as severe temporary side effects such as fatigue and headaches. The percentage of people who experience side effects is high. These show that the vaccine is working as designed. Train your immune system to react to what you might ignore and protect it later. It does not mean that the vaccine gave you Covid-19.
It all comes down to this: At some point in the coming months, you will be given an easy choice to protect yourself, your loved ones, and your community from the highly contagious. Fatal illness as a result Long-term health effects For a significant number of otherwise healthy people. It may take several days before you feel sick.
Matthew Woodruff I am an instructor at the Loance Center for Human Immunology at Emory University.
This article first appeared conversation..
