The other day I read an article that said something that surprised me. It said that vaccines work by mobilizing the immune system to fight the toxins produced by pathogens rather than the pathogens themselves. I’m not sure where the article was or I’d link to it.
As I see it there are several possibilities:
- I didn’t understand the article.
- The article was overgeneralizing.
- The article was wrong.
- You can’t make a clear distinction between the two.
- The article was right.
So, which of those was it? Or some combination?
Sounds like the article might be about toxoid vaccines.
That is almost certainly about toxoid vaccines (it couldn’t be possibly referring to antiviral vaccines, since viruses don’t produce toxins.) The toxoid vaccines in common use in humans are for tetanus and diphtheria. I know there has been research into making a vaccine against the MRSA toxin, so perhaps that was the subject of the article?
No, it was about pathogens.
The gist of the article was that the author was trying to make the case that researchers should stop looking for pathogens and start looking for toxins.
That struck me as odd since it seems to me that a rising number of diseases that used to be considered lifestyle diseases can now be attributed to pathogens. Indeed, I’d bet a shiny new dime that in 50 years all sorts of things that are now considered lifestyle diseases will be known to be genetic or induced by pathogens or some combination.
I don’t know….if the article made that assertion about all pathogens then I’d say (c). For the majority of pathogens for which we currently have vaccines (mostly viruses) it is incorrect.
The MRSA vaccine is pretty interesting, btw- using the novel concept of a “nanosponge” to deliver the toxin to the immune cells:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131201140205.htm