What types of vaccines does each type of vaccine preventable disease use?

So now we know what the types of vaccines are and the vaccine preventable diseases so lets put them in their respective categories:

    You may notice that Influenza has three different types of vaccines, live attenuated, killed, and subunit. This is because there are several different types of vaccines for influenza as it continues to mutate each year so each year a new vaccine specific to that strain needs to be developed. 

    Here are some pros and cons to each vaccine class:

Live attenuated:

Pros:

• Best immune response 
• Life long immunity 
• Minimal doses required
• Most similar to the actual pathogen without getting sick

Cons:

• Can't give to immunocompromised individuals
• Need to stay refrigerated   

Killed:

• Pros:

  • Stable and very safe
  • Easy storage and transport (specifically important in developing countries)
  Cons:
  • Need boosters to maintain immunity 
  • Weaker immune response than live vaccines   

Toxoid:

• Pros:

  • Safe and very specific at destroying the toxin that the bacteria is producing 
  • Has the ability to destroy toxins 
  • Better immunity than natural infection
  • Builds memory 
  Cons:
  • Need boosters to maintain immunity

Conjugate:

• Pros:

  • Children under the age of 5 cannot perform an immune response to encapsulated bacteria but with the vaccine they can 
  • Can allow body to fight encapsulated bacteria effectively 
  Cons:
  • Not all encapsulated bacteria have vaccines for them 
  • Expensive to develop 

Subunit:

• Pros:

  • Very specific
  • The whole microbe is not used in the vaccine 
  Cons:
  • Can be very time consuming to develop these vaccines as the antigens that stimulate the best immune response need to be identified

  
  

mRNA:

• Pros:

  • Safe and anyone can receive 
  • Can be rapidly developed and distributed 
  Cons:
  • Need boosters to maintain immunity