Vaccinations - active and passive

and Sabine Schrör, medical journalist

Sabine Schrör is a freelance writer for the medical team. She studied business administration and public relations in Cologne. As a freelance editor, she has been at home in a wide variety of industries for more than 15 years. Health is one of her favorite subjects.

More about the experts All content is checked by medical journalists.

Both active and passive immunization make the body impervious (immune) to a particular pathogen. Here you can find out exactly how this works, how active and passive vaccination differ from each other and what simultaneous vaccination is!

Active immunization

With active immunization, the healthy body is consciously and specifically brought into contact with a pathogen so that it produces specific defense substances (antibodies) against the intruder. It becomes active itself and thus arm itself against a "real" infection with the pathogen in question - this can then usually be quickly fended off by the appropriate antibodies available.

The production of specific antibodies after an active vaccination usually takes at least one to two weeks. In return, these antibodies are often effective and detectable for years and decades. In addition, the body creates memory cells (B lymphocytes), which can reproduce suitable antibodies at any time when they come into contact with the pathogen.

With modern vaccines, the administered pathogens are precisely dosed. They are also weakened (live vaccine) or killed (dead vaccine) before vaccination. Sometimes only individual characteristic components of a pathogen are vaccinated (also dead vaccine). All of these modern vaccines are generally well tolerated and very rarely cause side effects.

Live vaccines are injected against measles, mumps and rubella, for example. In contrast, a dead vaccine is administered for the tetanus and whooping cough vaccination.

Who Invented Active Immunization?

The principle of active immunization can be traced back to the Greek Thucydides (400 BC). He observed that some Athenians who had survived a plague disease no longer fell ill in later plague epidemics. As a result of such observations, people in the ancient cultures of Asia were deliberately brought into contact with the scabs and fluid secretions from skin symptoms typical of smallpox. This process is known as variolation. In Europe, the variolation was only introduced at the beginning of the 18th century by the Scottish doctor Maitland.

Passive immunization

With a passive vaccination, the body is injected with finished antibodies against a pathogen. The own immune system is not involved in the immunization - it does not form antibodies itself, so it remains passive.

The injected antibodies come either from humans or from animals that have themselves been actively vaccinated or have already gone through the respective infection and as a result produced specific antibodies against the pathogen.

A passive vaccination is usually given when the body has already become infected with the pathogen that causes disease and therefore there is no longer enough time for active immunization. The injected antibodies act immediately and can destroy the invading pathogen in a very short time. However, they are broken down by the body over time (because they are foreign substances). This is why vaccination protection only lasts for a maximum of three months after passive immunization.

The principle of passive immunization already works in the womb: the mother transfers its own antibodies to the unborn child in the womb, so that the baby is protected from many diseases in the first few weeks of life (so-called nest protection).

Passive immunization is possible, for example, with tetanus and rabies.

Simultaneous vaccination

Active and passive immunization can also be combined. The aim of such a simultaneous vaccination is to achieve rapid immediate protection through passive immunization and long-term immunity through active immunization. The simultaneous active and passive vaccination is used, for example, when there is a risk of tetanus and rabies.

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