Philip F. Incao, MD
In order to use vaccinations wisely, we need to understand exactly how they work. Until recently, the mechanism of action of vaccinations was always understood to be simply that they cause an increase in antibody levels (titers) against a specific disease antigen (bacterium or virus), thus preventing infection with that bacterial or viral antigen. In recent years science has learned that the human immune system is much more complicated than we thought. It is composed of two functional branches or compartments that may work together in a mutually cooperative way or in a mutually antagonistic way depending on the health of the individual.
One branch is the humoral immune system (or approximately Th2 function), which primarily produces antibodies in the blood circulation as a sensing or recognizing function of the immune system to the presence of foreign antigens in the body. The other branch is the cellular or cell-mediated immune system (or approximately Th1 function), which primarily destroys, digests and expels foreign antigens out of the body through the activity of its cells found in the thymus, tonsils, adenoids, spleen, lymph nodes and lymph system throughout the body. This process of destroying, digesting and discharging foreign antigens from the body is known as the acute inflammatory response and is often accompanied by the classic signs of inflammation: fever, pain, malaise and discharge of mucus, pus, skin rash or diarrhea.
These two functional branches of the immune system may be compared to the two functions in eating: tasting and recognizing the food on the one hand, and digesting the food and eliminating the food waste on the other hand. In the same way, the humoral or Th2 branch of the immune system tastes and recognizes and even remembers foreign antigens and the cellular or Th1 branch of the immune system digests and eliminates the foreign antigens from the body. But just as too much repeated tasting of food will ruin the appetite, so also too much repeated stimulation of the tasting humoral immune system by an antigen will inhibit and suppress the digesting and eliminating function of the cellular immune system. In other words, over stimulating antibody production can suppress the acute inflammatory response of the cellular immune system! 1
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