What are vaccines?

The number of vaccinated individuals against infectious diseases is declining in Bosnia and Herzegovina, although doctors warn that vaccines bring more benefits than harm. The Public Health Institute of the Federation of BiH confirmed that the trend of declining vaccinations exists. Coverage against measles, rubella, and mumps is particularly low, just over 60 percent. In an analysis for the Patria News Agency, Professor Tarik Bajrović explains what vaccines are, what the harmfulness of vaccines entails, what the essence of vaccines is, and to whom vaccines are intended.

By: Prof. Dr. Tarik Bajrović

What are vaccines?

Vaccines are means of active protection, they are classified as medicines although they are not used therapeutically...

The production and application of vaccines make sense, or have made sense, in protecting people from zoonotic pathogens and epidemic diseases with fatal outcomes, and in animals when economically important diseases appear (e.g., Foot and Mouth Disease in cloven-hoofed animals).

In the late 18th century, English physician Edward Jenner developed the first vaccine, against human smallpox, and the name vaccine (vacca = cow in Latin) originates from the content of the pustular rash of sick cows.

The greatest safety advancement in vaccine manufacturing has been achieved through innovating the substrates on which the current pathogens, bacterial or viral in nature (vaccines with parasitic pathogens are very rare), are multiplied, as well as through genetic engineering by reducing the specific pathogen from a complete particle to the level of nucleic acid (DNA).

What does the harmfulness of vaccines entail?

- pathogens multiplied on animal tissues or foreign protein for humans,

- pathogens in the vaccine are not sufficiently weakened,

- pathogens are not sufficiently immunogenic,

- not all vaccines are pure and are harmful without maintaining the so-called "cold chain".

There are not many current and/or legally prescribed vaccines, and conditionally speaking, they are mainly intended for infants and children, and less often for adults, except where people are professionally exposed to a zoonotic pathogen (e.g., anti-rabies protection for laboratory workers) or during seasonal flu vaccination campaigns. The situation is similar for animals.

What is the essence of vaccination?

To intentionally introduce pathogens of an infectious disease into a healthy individual, either in a quantity insufficient to cause illness or in the form of sufficiently live but weakened pathogens, in order to produce antibodies that will be able to recognize potential wild or field strains of pathogens that the individual might encounter and introduce into the body. In such a case, vaccine-induced antibodies should neutralize the disease pathogens and prevent its occurrence.

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Where are the sources of infection for MMR pathogens?

MMR is an abbreviation of the disease names: M - measles, M - mumps, R - rubella.

All three diseases have a unique viral (Paramyxovirus) etiology. These viruses have been identified in mammals and birds, and recently in reptiles. Virus transmission occurs through contact, while vectors are unknown. The virus can persist for a long time in normal and especially immunocompromised individuals, who are likely the most important sources of infection. Latent infections are not known, nor are long persistent periods. Serbian sources state that recent measles epidemics in Serbia are a consequence of virus import by Roma children, although not all cases could be linked to the same source.

Are vaccines to blame for autoimmune diseases?

Nowadays, scientists' attention is not so much focused on the etiological agent in vaccines that, like field strains, induce specific immunity, but rather on adjuvants (usually aluminum salts) that stimulate non-specific immunity and whose antibodies may not be "loyal" to the host but turn against the body's own cells, leading to pathological conditions like autism, which has not been fully confirmed to date.

Who are vaccines intended for?

Vaccines are intended for young, healthy, immunologically naive (less exposed or not exposed to pathogens) and healthy but pathogen-exposed individuals of known or unknown source of infection.

Should serological testing via blood be performed on people (and animals) before and after vaccination?

Healthy (but not sick) individuals should certainly be tested for the presence of specific antibodies before vaccination campaigns, especially children who may be immune from passively acquired antibodies from their mothers. Similarly, vaccinated individuals (or animals) should be tested to determine not only the presence of specific antibodies but also their level and potency. In some dogs, such a practice is performed after anti-rabies (rabies vaccine) protection.

Although in humans, checking immunity would guarantee a certain level of protection, in our circumstances, it is not performed for any current and legally prescribed vaccine.

It must also be emphasized that a fact that may have contributed to resistance to vaccination is the increasing demand for repeated applications of the same vaccine, even 4 or 5 times, which certainly significantly increases the intake of adjuvants and stresses young organisms with the injections themselves. Such decisions are not accidental and are most likely the result of insufficient immunity after one or two repetitions, and often have an economic background.

We should ask ourselves if there are sources of infection for some disease pathogens at a time when we consume healthily safe food, pasteurized water or milk, and in laboratories, protective equipment and different safety levels that cost millions of marks.

How to achieve laboratory diagnosis of diseases?

The shortcomings of diagnostics in our circumstances are based on diagnosing or making diagnostic decisions solely on the basis of clinical presentation, which means there is neither serological nor etiological diagnosis of a disease (the most common is the so-called "therapeutic diagnosis" in both human and veterinary medicine) that would guide not only therapy but also future prophylaxis with vaccines. We all witness in the media that medical experts talk about "epidemic" forms of a disease that, for example, "resembles the flu" or "lumpy skin disease," or insist on tetanus vaccines, even though there are almost no horses in these areas, which are the most important source of tetanus pathogens, and in this disease, naturally acquired antibodies are never sought through serological tests.

Finally, I cannot help but comment on the opinions regarding the danger of vaccinated children in kindergartens falling ill after the introduction of healthy unvaccinated children, which directly points to insufficient protection from vaccines, at least from the most current ones. In this way, I would not want to diminish the importance of specific immunoprophylaxis or vaccination, but before regaining trust, we must take all of the above into consideration.