E.g. if a woman has a tetanus shot, why does the kid need one? If she has an mmr shot, why does her child need to get one? If the lady also has a shot immunizing herself from chicken-pox, why isn’t the child also immune from chicken-pox?
Wouldn’t the child be immune from the diseases/ sicknesses that the mother already got her shots for?
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It does and it doesn’t.
While in the womb, and while breatfeeding, antibodies from the mother do pass into the child and give that child extra immunity.
But, those antibodies don’t last forever, and the cells that make the antibodies, B cells, do not pass to the baby, they stay in the mother.
So the babies own immune system needs to be activated later to start making its own antibodies.
Children inherit parts of the mother’s DNA and parts of the father’s DNA.
Vaccinations do not change your DNA.
It’s because the child is determined by information in your dna. Vaccinations normally do not alter your dna; they provoke a response from your immune system in an attempt to simulate what would happen if you actually contracted an illness and had resulting immunity.
Because the Memory T cells don’t transfer from the Mother to Child. Immunity comes from the body taking bits of slain viruses and using them as an example for new anti-bodies. These antigens are kept on Memory T Cells. However, these T cells don’t leave the body so the baby only benefits from the mother’s antibodies.
It’s sort of like having the weapons but not the soldiers in an war.
Fetuses can and do get the “weapons” from the mother to fight infections and immunity can pass from mother to fetus. For example the tetanus shot is now administered in something called the “dtap” which immunizes you against multiple illnesses and pregnant women are recommended to get that shot during pregnancy, specifically to pass the immunity to the children. Chicken Pox as well, the “weapons” will pass to the fetus.
The issue is the fetus’s immune system, it’s “soldiers” remain naïve to the illness and don’t receive the training on how to use or maintain the “weapons” and over time the child looses the protection as the “weapons” become useless.
The baby is isolated from the mother. They do not share any systems. There is a membrane (placenta) that facilitates the moving of nutrients, proteins and water, but that’s it.
Your immune system is in *your body.* It s a response your cells have learned You can’t pass that on. The baby has its own, isolated body within the mother’s body. A baby and a mother can have 2 different blood types. The mother can have HIV and the baby does not have it because, they are isolated from each other.
First because immunizations aren’t permanent. Immunizations have a certain time frame where they’re effective in the body. This timeframe is different for all immunizations and it’s based on how viruses evolve and how they locate themselves in our bodies and how our bodies fight them off. Tetanus shots, for example, last on average 10years. You’re supposed to get a new one every decade. However, flue shots are more or less yearly because the flu virus evolves and mutates much more often and can infect us in many more ways than tetanus. So we have to update the immunization for influenza much more often using new strains and to ensure our bodies still have enough of the inoculated virus to continue making antibodies. Because eventually, our bodies will get rid of the inoculated virus that was included in the immunization and will stop producing antibodies for it. And that’s because immunizations don’t change our DNA; so the body doesn’t permanently keep the instructions to fight the virus. It can only do so as long as the virus is present. Once it’s not present anymore, the body has to learn again how to produce those antibodies. So if a person gets a tetanus shot at 10years old but doesn’t get it updated and has a baby at 25, they likely have no antibodies against tetanus of their own to pass to the fetus in utero nor through their breast milk.
Second, because once the child is outside the womb, it no longer gets blood with antibodies from the immunization. In utero, children get antibodies through the blood supply of the person carrying them. Once born, they can continue to get antibodies from breast milk of the person nursing them. But once they are weaned and no longer drink breast milk; then they have to rely only on their own bodies to produce antibodies against viruses. So that’s when they’ll need to be immunized, so that their body can start producing antibodies on its own since they no longer get antibodies from anywhere else. And as I said, immunizations don’t change DNA so they can’t leave instructions for your body to create antibodies on its own without the presence of the virus in your system. So we have to be immunized to start that process.
they sorta do.
they way the placenta works doesnt allow for this sort of mixing ot lead to anythnig permanent regarding immunity(antibodies can pass pass thru but immune cells cannot.) .
however for the 1st 6 or so months or at the least asl ong as the mother is capable of breastfeeding the child will piggyback off the mother’s immune system thru their diet.the idea being that the milk will carry the antibodies but not the actual immune cells kinda like ” you were provided the guns, but not the soldiers, you gotta train those yourself”.
Mothers pass on antibodies to children through breast milk
So yes, this can happen
But it’s hit-and-miss, so it doesn’t replace the need for vaccines
There are also other things that can happen which lead to fetuses being exposed to antibodies in the womb
Usually the placenta blocks most antibodies from the mother from reaching the fetus. This occurs so that the mother’s immune system doesn’t accidentally attack the baby, since sometimes babies can have a different blood type than the mother. So there’s a reason the antibodies are transferred via breast milk, it’s safer
Antibodies are not obtained from chromosomal dna from the mother’s egg, so they are not passed down through the normal chromosmes like many traits such as colour-blindness or whatever, they must be acquired seperately through exposure to a pathogen or from breast milk or a vaccine
In order for the child to receive lasting immunity, they must produce antibodies. They only do that when exposed to the thing (antigen) that they are trying to react to.
If the mother got immunized long ago, she likely no longer has the antigen (material that caused her to make the antibodies) in her system. Even if exposed, her body would remove it — she’s got antibodies against it, after all, and that’s what they do.
The child CAN benefit a little from their mother’s immunity. A child that receives breast milk can receive antibodies from the mother which can fight disease. Some gets digested, but some gets into the blood. The mother’s antibodies will target the antigen, but they can’t train the body to make it’s own antibodies against it. For that, the body needs the antigen to learn to make antibodies against it. The antibodies from the milk simply give the child a leg up in fighting infection while their own immune system learns to make antibodies on it’s own.
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