How Vaccines Work

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Adaptive immune defenses: Antibodies

With the looming prospect of mass immunization against influenza, it's important to understand how vaccines work. To do this we must have a good understanding of adaptive immune defenses. Today we'll begin a discussion of the humoral arm of the adaptive immune response - antibodies.

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http://www.virology.ws/

The vast majority of influenza vaccines are administered by injection and stimulate the production of IgG antibodies; they are poor inducers of mucosal IgA antibodies. The efficacy of influenza vaccines would likely be markedly improved if they could be designed to stimulate mucosal immunity. Flumist is a licensed, intranasally-administered infectious virus vaccine that has been shown to stimulate both mucosal and systemic immunity. Nine clinical trials have been conducted in children comparing the efficacy of Flumist with inactivated vaccine or placebo. An analysis of the results suggests that the intranasally administered vaccine is more effective in preventing influenza. These results underscore the role of local immunity in resistance to respiratory pathogens.

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