Wednesday 9 December 2020

What ingredients are in vaccines?

 Vaccines are a central player in our fight against infectious diseases. What components are commonly found in vaccines, and what is their purpose? In this Special Feature article, we find out.

Many people will be familiar with the concept that a vaccine against a particular virus will contain a small amount of the pathogen or a part of it, at least.

When we receive the vaccine, the viral interloper triggers our immune system to launch a series of events that leave us protected against the pathogen in the future.

But a glance at the ingredients in common vaccines reveals a long list of other components, the roles of which might not seem so clear cut.

What is the purpose of the likes of gelatin, thimerosal, and Polysorbate 80? And why do some vaccines contain aluminum?

In this Special Feature article, we look at the active and inactive ingredients that make their way into vaccines and reveal what their role is in protecting us from infectious diseases.

Our immune system and active ingredients

The active ingredient in a vaccine is usually made from the viral or bacterial pathogen itself. There are two different approaches to this, with the pathogen being either alive or inactivated.

Vaccines that incorporate living bacteria or viruses are called live attenuated vaccines. The pathogen is weakened to prevent it from causing the disease, but it is still able to elicit a strong immune response.

Live attenuated vaccines work very well, but they are not suitable for everyone. If a person is immunocompromised, they may contract the very disease from which the vaccine should be protecting them.

Many vaccines, therefore, use an inactivated version of the active ingredients, which can take the form of whole bacteria or viruses that have been killed.

However, most vaccines are actually acellular, which means that they do not contain the whole pathogenic organism. Instead, they are made from parts of the pathogen, such as proteins or sugar molecules. Our bodies recognize these molecules as foreign and mount an immune response.

Examples of acellular vaccines are:

  • toxoid vaccines that contain inactivated toxins from pathogenic bacteria
  • conjugate vaccines made from a combination of pathogen-specific sugar molecules and toxoid proteins, as the sugars themselves do not cause sufficiently strong immune responses
  • recombinant vaccines made by using bacteria or yeast cells to make many copies of specific molecules from the pathogen

Aside from the active ingredient, vaccines contain many other things. The technical term for these is excipients.

Excipients include preservatives and stabilizers, traces of things that were used to produce the vaccine, and adjuvants.

Adjuvants make vaccines stronger

Although many vaccines contain active ingredients that are strong enough to kick our immune system into gear, some need a little bit of extra help to be effective.

Adjuvants are compounds that elicit a strong immune response, improving how well a vaccine works.

Examples of adjuvants include:

  • metals
  • oils
  • biological molecules, such as components isolated from bacteria and synthetic DNA

Aluminum, in the form of aluminum salt, features in a variety of vaccines, including several routine childhood vaccines. Scientists believe that this adjuvant increases the production of antibodies.

Aluminum is a naturally occurring metal that has many uses aside from its adjuvant properties. Cans, foil, and some window frames contain aluminum.

Aluminum salts are also used in the food industry as additives.

As an adjuvant, aluminum has a long history going back to the 1930s. Despite its widespread use, some scientists believe that the metal can cause damage to the nervous system and promote autoimmunity.

However, many experts disagree with this assessment, pointing out that some of the research implicating aluminum has been retracted.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a study in 2011 in the journal Vaccine, which concluded that “episodic exposures to vaccines that contain aluminum adjuvant continue to be extremely low risk to infants and that the benefits of using vaccines containing aluminum adjuvant outweigh any theoretical concerns.”

Another example of an adjuvant is squalene, a naturally occurring oil.

The Fluad vaccine, a flu vaccine licensed for adults aged 65 years and older, contains an adjuvant called MF59, which is an oil-in-water emulsion containing squalene. The squalene used in MF59 is purified from shark liver oil.

In 2000, a research team pointed to a link between squalene and Gulf War Syndrome, prompting fears about the safety of this adjuvant.

However, subsequent research did not back up the findings, and the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded in 2006 that these fears were “unfounded.”

Source: Medical News Today

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