Talk:Vaccine failure

Natural immunity?

I've known of two men whose smallpox vaccination failed after several attempts. They considered the hypothesis that they had a natural immunity from the disease. I've started an exploration of this possibility, though some have told me there must have been some rational reason which would explain it some other way. Brian Pearson (talk) 02:39, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

(NB: A continuation of this discussion).

Like most scientific problems, the answer is likely to be more complicated than "vaccine failure is caused by X". An interesting publication on vaccine failure used a twin study into MMR failures and found a variable level of genetic contribution:

Tan PL, Jacobson RM, Poland GA, Jacobsen SJ, Pankratz VS (2001). "Twin studies of immunogenicity--determining the genetic contribution to vaccine failure". Vaccine. 19 (17–19): 2434–9. PMID 11257374. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

A more general (and more recent) study also examining immunological response to several vaccines found both significant environmental and genetic factors in a time-dependent pattern:

Marchant A, Pihlgren M, Goetghebuer T; et al. (2006). "Predominant influence of environmental determinants on the persistence and avidity maturation of antibody responses to vaccines in infants". The Journal of infectious diseases. 193 (11): 1598–605. doi:10.1086/503775. PMID 16652290. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

-- MarcoTolo (talk) 00:59, 13 October 2008 (UTC)