What the side effects of the vaccine tell you about your body

(((conversation) – If someone has a headache or the weather is a little depressed after vaccination with COVID-19, something like “Oh, that means my immune system is really working hard.” It’s become common to hear people say that. On the contrary, when people are unaware of side effects, they are sometimes worried that Shot is not doing the job or their immune system is not responding at all.

Is there a link between what you can notice after vaccination and what is happening at the cellular level in your body? Robert Finberg is a physician specializing in infectious diseases and immunology at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine. He explains how this perception does not match the reality of how vaccines work.

What does your body do when you get the vaccine?

Your immune system responds to the foreign molecules that make up the vaccine through two different systems. The initial reaction is due to the so-called innate immune reaction. The system activates as soon as cells become aware that they have been exposed to a foreign substance, from debris to viruses. Its goal is to eliminate intruders. White blood cells called neutrophils and macrophages migrate to the invaders and destroy them.

This first line of defense is relatively short-lived and lasts hours or days. The second line of defense can take days or weeks to go live. This is a long-term adaptive immune response. It relies on T and B cells of the immune system to learn to recognize specific invaders, such as coronavirus proteins. If an intruder encounters it again months or years later, it is these immune cells that recognize the old enemy and begin producing antibodies that destroy it. With the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, it takes about two weeks to develop an adaptive response that provides long-term protection against the virus.

When you are vaccinated, what you notice in the first day or two is part of the innate immune response. In other words, it is an inflammatory reaction in the body that aims to quickly remove foreign molecules that have broken around the body.

It varies from person to person, but how dramatic the initial reaction is is not necessarily related to the long-term reaction. With the two mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, more than 90% of immunized people developed a defensive adaptive immune response, less than 50% developed side effects, and most were mild. You may never know how strongly your body’s adaptive immune response is prepared.

The bottom line is that you can’t measure how well a vaccine works in your body based on what you can detect from the outside. The immune response to the vaccine varies from person to person, but the side effects after firing do not tell you which one you are. This is not the initial pain or the pain-causing inflammatory response, but the second adaptive immune response that helps the body acquire vaccine immunity.

Anyway, what are the side effects?

Side effects are the normal response to injections of foreign bodies. They include fever, muscle aches, and injection site discomfort and are mediated by an innate immune response.

Neutrophils and macrophages in the body become aware of vaccine molecules and produce cytokines. This is a molecular signal that causes fever, chills, malaise, and muscle aches. Doctors expect this cytokine response to occur each time a foreign body is injected into the body.

In a study in which neither the recipient nor the researchers knew which individuals were vaccinated with the mRNA or placebo, about half of people aged 16-55 years who received the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine were vaccinated after the second vaccination. I have a headache. Although this reaction may be vaccine-related, one-quarter of people who received only placebo also developed headaches. Therefore, for very common symptoms, it can be very difficult to reliably attribute them to the vaccine.

Researchers anticipate some reports of side effects. Adverse events, on the other hand, are unexpected to the doctor as a result of the vaccine. They include organ failure or serious damage to any part of the body.

The blood clot that triggered the US to suspend the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a very rare event and appears to occur at a frequency of one in a million. Whether they are definitely caused by the vaccine is still under investigation, but if scientists conclude that they are the cause, blood clots are a very rare side effect.

Which component of the shot causes side effects?

The only “active ingredient” in Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is the mRNA command that directs the recipient’s cells to build viral proteins. However, the shot contains other ingredients that help the mRNA move through the body.

In order to get the vaccine mRNA into the cells of a vaccinated person to do its job, it is necessary to avoid the enzymes in the body that naturally destroy the vaccine. Researchers protected the vaccine’s mRNA by wrapping it in a lipid foam to prevent destruction. Other components of the shot, such as polyethylene glycol that are part of this lipid envelope, can cause an allergic reaction.

If you feel sick after a shot, does it show strong immunity?

Scientists have not identified a link between an early inflammatory response and a long-term response that leads to protection. There is no scientific evidence that people with more obvious side effects from the vaccine are better protected from COVID-19. And there is no reason to have an exaggerated innate reaction to make your adaptive response even better.

Both licensed mRNA vaccines provided protective immunity to more than 90% of recipients, but less than 50% reported a response to the vaccine, and far fewer responded severely. did.