Kuwait Recommendations on Vaccine Use in People with Inflammatory Rheumatic Diseases

Box 2

Vaccine overview.

(i) Whole-cell live-attenuated (weakened) vaccines: contain a version of the living pathogen

  that has been weakened to prevent it from causing disease

(ii) Whole-cell nonlive (inactivated) vaccines: produced by killing the pathogen with

  chemicals, heat, or radiation; more stable and safer than live vaccines

(iii) Subunit vaccines: do not contain live components of the pathogen, but only the antigenic

  parts of the pathogen necessary to elicit the protective immune response, for example,

  conjugate vaccines, which are created by attaching antigens from the pathogen to a protein

  carrier in order to elicit a better immune response