How do vaccines prevent the spread of some infectious diseases?

Answer 1

It activates the body's natural defenses and puts the body on "alert"

answer #2=vaccines help by bringing forth white blood cells to the invading area faster than regular. It also injects antibodies into your body to help kill the bacteria and viruses.

Answer #3=

You have to remember (talking to answer number two) that viruses are not considered alive so you actually dont "Kill them" you dispose of them or get rid of them! :)

Answer 2

First of all a vaccine for a disease is pretty much a small version of the disease itself. Don't get worried though. The vaccine is weaker but still helps. When injected the virus will mulitply. But you white blood cells can fight of the virus. Don't worried if you feel sick after the injection it is normal. But this works because when you get the real thing your body knows how to fight it making you sort of immune to the disease. This is the only way to protect yourself from a virus.
it exposes your immune system a tiny bit to the disease so your system is more immune to it then it would be full blown all of a sudden. you system will know how to protect you more

Answer 3

Vaccines expose the body's immune system to a deadened or weakened version of an infectious disease, allowing it to be prepared for subsequent infections by that particular antigen (foreign invader/material). During the immune response to the vaccine, a "virgin" B cell (with matching receptor to the antigen) is exposed to the specific antigen and is activated by a helper T cell, causing a massive buildup of mature B cells (through mitosis), specialized antibodies (produced by the mature B cells), and memory cells (that would allow a quicker and more decisive immune response to the antigen should it ever reappear again). The circulation of antibodies in the body and the production of memory B cells as the direct results of vaccination prevent an infectious disease from getting a foothold in the body.

Answer 4

When you receive a vaccination basically what a nurse or a doctor is doing is injecting a very tiny amount of the disease into you and then you body will learnt o fight the bug off. This means that your body will be able to fight off the illness when it approaches you completely because your immune system has already worked out a way of defending itself against the disease and so your body will fight off the beginning of you disease before it hits you.

Answer 5

A vaccine is typically a killed virus or attenuated (living but altered or damaged so as not able to cause disease) that is introduced to your immune system. The immune system detects the invader and begins to create antibodies to it. Since the killed or attenuated vaccine can not cause disease itself, your body can easily produce antibodies and the vaccine is soon flushed out of your body. Later, when you are subjected to the actual live and virulent virus, your body immediately recognizes it and has the antibodies to prevent the infection.

There are so called "shell" vaccines which are basically the same as killed. I'm not certain if a so called "synthetic" vaccine, which claim to have no actual virus, may actually be a play on technicalities and actually contain a killed virus as well.

A great example of an attenuated virus is the popular Swine Flu nasal spray vaccine. The virus is alive but has been damaged or altered so that it can not survive above 94 degrees Fahrenheit. The virus actually infects the outer most layers of your nasal mucosa but can go no further as your body temperature is certainly well above 94. This benign infection maybe a mild irritation or runny nose, much like a common cold or rhino virus. Your body builds antibodies, wipes it out and is ready for the real deal should it come in contact with it.

Answer 6

Vaccinations protect people by giving the immune system a "head start" as it were.

The immune system is divided into two parts; the innate which does a lot of the work most of the time and is non-specific to pathogens. We then have an adaptive immune system, which sort of learns to identify the pathogen and means that we can fight the illness far more effectively the next time we are exposed. This way we suffer less the next time we catch it, or sometimes we don't even notice that we've caught anything.

Vaccinations mimic the first exposure of someone to a pathogen, but in a less severe way, allowing your body to learn to fight the disease so that the next time you catch it you don't suffer as much.

A great analogy is chicken pox. You catch chicken pox once, and 99.9% of people never catch it again because their body has learned to fight it off. A vaccine is just like catching the chicken pox for the first time, but without the itchiness, rash and feeling miserable.

Answer 7

By making one immune to this disease. The vaccination makes your cells recoginize the disease a second time, enabling a swift "victory" against such diseases.