Vaccine
substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute
A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verified. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and recognize further and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future.
Vaccines can be prophylactic (to prevent or alleviate the effects of a future infection by a natural or "wild" pathogen), or therapeutic (to fight a disease that has already occurred, such as cancer). Some vaccines offer full sterilizing immunity, in which infection is prevented.
The administration of vaccines is called vaccination. Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing infectious diseases; widespread immunity due to vaccination is largely responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the restriction of diseases such as polio, measles, and tetanus from much of the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that licensed vaccines are available for twenty-five different preventable infections.
The first recorded use of inoculation to prevent smallpox (see variolation) occurred in the 16th century in China, with the earliest hints of the practice in China coming during the 10th century.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Vaccine” is substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Vaccine, substance and used, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q134808. The Library of Congress control number is sh85141718. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vaccine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.