Browsing: Vaccine

A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease. It typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and remember it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters. Vaccines have been a major force in public health, greatly reducing the prevalence of infectious diseases that were once widespread and often fatal, such as polio, measles, and smallpox. Modern research in vaccines is highly innovative, leading to the development of new methods like mRNA vaccines, which are crucial in the fight against rapidly evolving diseases like COVID-19.