Pathogens and how vaccines protect us from illnesses |22 January 2021

With a lot of commotion about the new Covid-19 vaccine, Sinopharm, many rumours and false information have been spreading like wild fire on different social media platforms.

So exactly how do vaccines work and just how effective are they when fighting against viruses?

In order to answer this question, you will need to know exactly how viruses work in the first place.

A pathogen is a bacterium, virus, parasite or fungus that can cause disease within the body. Each pathogen is made up of several subparts.The subpart of a pathogen that causes the formation of antibodies is called an antigen.

Each antibody, or soldier, in our system is trained to recognise one specific antigen. You can consider antibodies as the soldiers in your body’s defense system. When the human body is exposed to an antigen for the first time, it takes time for the immune system to respond and produce antibodies specific to that antigen.

In the meantime, the person is susceptible to becoming ill. 

Once the antigen-specific antibodies are produced, they work with the rest of the immune system to destroy the pathogen and stop the disease.

Once the body produces antibodies in its primary response to an antigen, it also creates antibody-producing memory cells, which remain alive even after the pathogen is defeated by the antibodies.

If the body is exposed to the same pathogen more than once, the antibody response is much faster and more effective than the first time around because the memory cells are at the ready to pump out antibodies against that antigen.

This means that if the person is exposed to the dangerous pathogen in the future, their immune system will be able to respond immediately, protecting against disease. 

With that information in mind, where do vaccines come in?

Vaccines contain weakened or inactive parts of an antigen that triggers an immune response within the body. Newer vaccines contain the blueprint for producing antigens rather than the antigen itself. This weakened version will not cause the disease in the person receiving the vaccine, but it will prompt their immune system to respond much as it would have on its first reaction to the actual pathogen.

In this way, the body is trained to fight the specific disease-causing organism, building up memory of the pathogen so as to rapidly fight it if and when exposed in the future.

Compiled by Joshua Marie