113 – Vaccines

Dr. Carole Keim MD takes listeners through vaccines in today’s episode. She explains everything from how vaccines are created to common myths and misconceptions about them. She then details each baby and childhood vaccine, and what disease each prevents.

Dr. Keim breaks down how vaccines work and what criteria they must meet in disease to be effective. She explains the four main types of vaccines and lays each vaccination out in a clear manner, covering what age your baby or child will be when they receive the vaccine and how the immune response works. These vaccines are proven to protect your baby against everything from tetanus to mumps to pertussis and more.

This episode will cover: 

• How vaccines work
• Criteria to create a vaccine
• The 4 different types of vaccines
• Common myths or misconceptions about vaccines
• Specific vaccines (all routine childhood vaccines)
• Total number of vaccines
• Common side effects and red flags, how to treat 

How vaccines work: 00:44

• The purpose of vaccines is to trigger an immune response faster and with less harm than the original disease.
• The immune system is a lot like a microscopic team of superheroes, made up of white blood cells, antibodies, the complement system, and a few others.  These superheroes fight villains such as bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens.  If they cannot fight them fast enough, the villains will multiply and cause symptoms of disease.  
• Vaccines give your superhero team information about what the villains look like, so they can recognize them as soon as they enter the body, and fight them off quicker and easier.

Vaccine criteria: 01:26

• In order to make a vaccine, certain conditions must be met
• It has to be effective.  We must be able to become immune to the pathogen; diseases like RSV and HFM are ones we can catch multiple times.  Chickenpox is one that you become immune to after catching it once.
• The pathogen must not be able to mutate faster than the vaccine can be given – we do flu boosters annually because the flu virus mutates about that often.  HIV and common cold mutate too fast for a vaccine to be developed.
• The vaccine must be cost-effective; it has to be cheaper to prevent the disease than to treat it

There are 4 main types of vaccines: 02:31

• Inactivated (killed pathogens)
• Live attenuated (weakened pathogens)
• Toxoid (a piece of what’s inside the pathogen)
• mRNA vaccines 

Inactivated vaccines 03:44

• Most common type
• The bacteria or viruses in the vaccine are killed, so your immune system can safely learn to recognize the pathogen that it is trying to fight off.  These vaccines do not have the potential to cause actual disease.  What they do is cause the immune system superheroes to practice fighting the villains, kind of like practicing on dummies, which may cause mild signs of illness – fever, sore muscles, crankiness, or other symptoms.  
• Examples: IPV (polio), HPV (human papillomavirus), HiB (Haemophilus influenzae B), pneumococcus (Streptococcus pneumoniae), meningococcus (Neisseria meningitidis), and Hepatitis A and B vaccines.

Live attenuated vaccines 04:02

• Made from bacteria or viruses that have been exposed to chemicals that make them weaker than the natural or “wild type” bacteria or virus.  
• Since these pathogens are not killed completely, your superheroes aren’t just practicing on dummies, they are actually fighting the weakened villains.  So it is possible to have symptoms of the disease, but milder.  
• Some people with weakened immune systems may not be able to fight them off, and can get the actual disease.  People taking steroid medications or immune suppressants, or who have HIV or other immune deficiencies should consult a doctor about whether it is safe to receive these vaccines.  
• Examples: oral polio vaccine, MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella), Varicella zoster (chickenpox), and rotavirus vaccines.

Toxoid vaccines 04:55

• Made from just part of the pathogen, and protect against the kinds of bacteria that cause symptoms after the toxins inside them are released.  
• These toxin-carrying bacteria are like villains carrying around a bottle of poison, and the toxoid vaccine gives the superheroes the poison to sample and build up resistance to it.  
• Example: DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis).

MRNA vaccines 05:23

• Newest type
• mRNA is like a copy of instructions. These give your immune system something like a sewing pattern to print out and make the dummies for your body to fight
• Example: some COVID vaccines

Myths and misconceptions about vaccines: 05:45

• Many parents have concerns about vaccinating their children.  It only takes one serious reaction to call into question the safety of vaccines.  And it has been so long since the vaccine-preventable diseases have run rampant that we in the United States don’t fully understand the scope of wha…