How does vaccines prevent future infections?

Answer 1

Vaccines inject a weak amount of the pathogen that causes the infection into you. This is not enough to harm you. This causes your bodies lymphocyte white blood cells to produce antibodies that lock onto antigens on the pathogen, marking then out for your phagocyte white blood cells to destroy them.

This means that next time you get infected with the pathogen, your body recognises it quicker so it can produce the antibodies much faster and destroy the pathogen before you express any symptoms.

Answer 2

Vaccines are created by taking a sample of whatever you want to prevent and heating it up just enough to kill it or severely weaken it. When that is injected in a person, their immune system will still fight it like it was alive. Even though it's dead, it's still the virus/bacterium, and your body marks it down as such.

So now here comes the real thing, but your body already knows from the vaccine that this is a very bad thing and needs to be removed. Your immune system promptly does so.

Answer 3

When a person receives a vaccine, the body reacts by making protective substances called "antibodies". The antibodies are the body's defenders because they help to kill off the germs that enter the body. In other words, vaccines expose people safely to germs, so that they can become protected from a disease but not come down with the disease.

Answer 4

The human body has several different types of white blood cells (WBCs) which fight foreign invaders (Antigens) that enter our body. Certain types of WBCs react to specific invaders to produce antibodies that aid in the destruction of these antigens. However, it takes time to produce these antibodies, especially if it is the first time the body has come into contact with a specific antigen.

The Lymphocyte is a WBC that transforms into a B cell. Whenever an antigen enters the body, the B cell proliferates into plasma cells and memory cells. Plasma cells produce the antibodies against a specific antigen. The first time this happens, it takes several days for the antibodies to become numerous enough to do any good. The memory cells are created to prevent this time lag from happening again. They enhance the production of antibodies upon second contact.

Vaccines are a collection of dead or attenuated antigens (foreign invaders) that are introduced into the body so that memory cells are created. If the live antigen enters at a later time, the body now has the ability to rapidly create antibodies. The vaccine does not prevent future infections, it enables your body to kill the foreign invader before it has an effect on your body. Therefore, you won't even know you've been infected.