Do you and your loved ones need a tick-borne encephalitis vaccine?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

In the spring, it's great to wallow on the first grass, but one moment spoils everything: in this very grass there are hungry ticks, which are often also contagious. Is it worth running for the vaccine or will it cost something? Let's figure it out in this article.

- This is an extremely dangerous disease, with an unfavorable course leading to death. The virus affects the nervous system, so an infected person runs the risk of experiencing the severe consequences of the disease, up to and including paralysis.

The problem is that not a single tick is recognized, whether it is infectious or just like that, to drink blood, sucked. Therefore, the onset of the disease, when the effectiveness of treatment is highest, is easy to miss.

You have to think more about how to protect yourself. There are few ways to protect yourself: to destroy ticks en masse, prevent them from biting (that is, go to forests and parks in closed clothes) or get vaccinated.

How the vaccine works

When a person becomes infected, the body begins to produce antibodies. These are specific proteins that must destroy a virus or bacterium. This process is not fast, so sometimes the virus manages to infect a large number of cells before the antibodies deal with it.

Any vaccine is invented so that these same antibodies appear in the blood. To do this, weakened or dead (as in the case of encephalitis) pathogens are introduced into the body. The disease does not develop from them, but antibodies appear. And when you have to face a real disease, the body destroys it, because the weapon is already at the ready. There are also vaccinations against tick-borne encephalitis.

Important! Vaccination against tick-borne encephalitis does not protect against bites and does not save from other diseases that ticks carry:, and others.

Therefore, even a vaccinated person must protect himself from ticks.

What can be vaccinated

There are four drugs in Russia. Two of them are of domestic production:

1. "Vaccine of tick-borne encephalitis cultural purified concentrated inactivated dry".
2. EnceVir.

Two are made in Europe, and these vaccines have forms that can be used in children from one year old:

1. FSME-Immun Inject and FSME-Immun Junior, Austria.
2. Encepur adults and Encepur baby, Germany.

All of these vaccines are highly effective. It is clear that it is impossible for ethical reasons to test how vaccines work with a placebo-controlled study: it would have to deliberately infect people with encephalitis to do this. Therefore, the benefits of vaccinations are evaluated by tests. If antibodies appeared in the blood of the vaccinated person, then everything worked as it should.

Rospotrebnadzor that vaccines work in 95–99% of cases. The World Health Organization is also for, and it is the high quality of our drugs.

Difficulties and insurmountable obstacles

If everything is so great, why are we still not vaccinated?

First, not everyone can be vaccinated. There are individual contraindications (European vaccines have fewer of them). The most common is an allergy to vaccine components. There is nothing to be done here, you will have to carefully monitor the form of clothing all summer.

Secondly, many are afraid of reactions to the vaccine. The fact is that in about 7% of vaccinated people (depending on the vaccine), the temperature rises, the place where the injection was made turns red, and body aches are felt. These symptoms are a natural reaction to the introduction of the causative agent of the disease and a reason to go to the doctor just in case. And then everyone chooses for himself what he fears more: a possible encephalitis or a couple of days of unwell.

Third, vaccines are often not available in clinics. For example, in Ulyanovsk, you can get vaccinated if your work is associated with a permanent stay in the forest or in the field. Otherwise, doctors just shrug their shoulders and say that there is no vaccine for everyone. But the vaccine is available in paid centers. (If you decide to get vaccinated in a private clinic, check the license specifically for immunization - this is a separate type of medical care.)

Fourthly, the vaccination is remembered when the ticks have already woken up and are ready to attack you on walks. And it takes time to develop immunity.

How to vaccinate

Ideally, it was necessary to think about vaccination even in winter. Vaccination is carried out according to a certain scheme: first, the first vaccination is given, after a month or two - the second, after a year - the third.

Immunity to encephalitis appears approximately two weeks after the introduction of the SECOND vaccination.

That is, one and a half months and two doses are the minimum conditions for the effectiveness of the vaccination.

If you then do not forget and do the third vaccination, then immunity will last for three years. After three years, the vaccination will have to be repeated. True, with the help of one vaccination, not three.

Does it make sense to run for the vaccine now

Depends on the place of residence and plans for the summer. In an extreme case (when you urgently need to go to a dangerous zone), you can enter a ready-made immunoglobulin, without waiting for your own one to be developed. This is exactly what they do when a tick has bitten an unvaccinated person. But such immunity lasts no more than a month. Donor immunoglobulin is less effective and the number of adverse reactions is higher than that of vaccines.

Who needs to be vaccinated

According to the data, less than three million people have been vaccinated against the tick-borne encephalitis virus in Russia. This is negligible, considering that ixodid ticks - carriers of the virus - are common throughout the territory: in some regions there are more of them, in some less. The list of hazardous areas for 2015 can be viewed.

If you live in an area with a high risk of infection, often walk in the forest or in the park, then it is worth vaccinating, because the activity of ticks can persist until the end of the warm season. Everyone else - to act at their own discretion.