Contents
How the vaccine differs from the medicinal serum: briefly, what’s the difference
It is difficult for a person without medical education to understand how the vaccine differs from serum. These drugs prevent or treat disease initially. Since we are talking about health, you need to know how each drug affects the body, and what effect it has.
What is the Difference Between Serum and Vaccine
The action of the serum is aimed at treating a disease that has already begun, and the vaccine forms immunity to the disease.
A therapeutic vaccine is needed to defeat an already onset disease
The vaccine contains weakened or killed germs that cause a particular disease. It is administered to a healthy person. After the microbes enter the body, it begins to fight them. As a result of the struggle, antibodies to the disease are produced. And since microbes are weakened, they do not harm a person, as a disease would do.
The serum contains antibodies to a specific disease. They are obtained from the blood of animals that have suffered a disease or have been vaccinated against it. When a person is already sick, then serum will help him recover. But it is effective only at the onset of the disease.
When children are vaccinated against measles, rubella, whooping cough, and other diseases, they are given the vaccine. Thus, children are protected from these ailments for several years. And if a person is already sick, then the vaccination will not help him, in this case, serum is needed.
Difference in action of medicinal serum and vaccine
The serum works instantly and the effect lasts 1-2 months. The vaccine, on the other hand, has a long-term effect, which appears after some time.
If a person is bitten by a snake or a tick, he needs to inject serum against poison or against tick-borne encephalitis virus. In order for the drug to work, it must be administered as soon as possible: within 3-4 hours after a snake bite, and within XNUMX hours after a tick bite.
Serum is obtained from the blood of pigs, rabbits, horses that are immune to the disease.
Serum will help to cope with the irreversible effects of diseases such as gangrene, botulism, tetanus. And if you get vaccinated against these diseases in a timely manner, then a person will have immunity to them, and he simply will not get sick with them.
The list of diseases that serum treats is much smaller than the list of diseases that can be prevented by a vaccine. Therefore, vaccinations are given to prevent serious diseases.
So, before the advent of the vaccine at 18 in Russia, every 7 children died from smallpox alone.
The vaccine is designed to help people avoid many diseases. And serum is needed to defeat terrible ailments, with irreversible consequences. They are used in different situations, but they act for the benefit of the person.