Quote: (07-25-2017 01:00 AM)Alpharius Wrote:
Quote: (07-24-2017 11:57 PM)the-dream Wrote:
Quote: (01-03-2017 02:59 PM)PUA_Rachacha Wrote:
What if you already contracted HPV? Would getting the vaccine still make sense? Or is the vaccine only a preventative measure and not something that would help the immune system eradicate any rogue oral cancer cells.
There was a study recently that suggested that even if you were previously infected with HPV but your immune system has fought off the virus, getting the vaccine can make you immune. Also, maybe you had one type of HPV before and even if the vaccine doesn't make you immune to that then there are many other types that it will make you immune to.
Can you link to that? It's been a while since my last biology class, but once you have the antibodies from fighting something off, don't you keep the antibodies for X amount of time/forever?
There are multiple types of antibodies.
For long-term immunity, you need a type of antibody called immunoglobulin M (IgM).
IgM levels tend to taper off over the course of months/years, depending on how strong the initial infection/vaccine reaction was.
You can encourage the body to develop chronic/lifelong immunity by throwing more infection/vaccine at it, causing the body to switch IgM production from month-long to life-long.
How many stimulus events required depend on the strength of the vaccine/infection and whether the human body, from an evolutionary perspective, prioritizes that specific organism.
For example, if you get severe chicken pox as a kid, then 90% of the time you will have lifelong immunity even though it was only a once-off stimulus (that said, the Chicken Pox virus infection is a lifelong infection, it's just that the virus becomes dormant, so there is always a bit of virus around to stimulate the immune system, which is probably why IgM levels never fall down).
On the other hand, the human body doesn't really care much about HPV, so it seems that you need 3 shots of the vaccine before the body finally gets the message. Even so, the HPV vaccine is too new for us to know if it really gives lifelong immunity.