Active Immunity | Definition, Types and Examples

By | August 5, 2022

Active Immunity Definition

What is Active Immunity? Active Immunity occurs when your body becomes immune to a disease due to a vaccine, a successful infection in the past, or exposure to what will become an infection in the future.

The condition of being immune to a particular disease by having had it or being inoculated against it. The state of being immune to a disease due to having contracted and overcome it at an earlier time.

In this person is being rendered unresponsive to a particular antigen by having encountered it in the past, as through previous infection or immunization: varicella provides lifelong Immunity against further infection with chickenpox.

Active Immunity

 

Types of Active Immunity:

Here are the three main types of active immunities:

  1. Acquired active Immunity
  2. Active Cellular Immunity
  3. Passive Immunity 

Acquired active Immunity occurs when your body becomes immune to disease after getting vaccinated or exposed to what will become an infection in the future.

Active Cellular Immunity (also called humoral Immunity) occurs when your white blood cells, designed to fight diseases, recognize what is foreign in your body and create antibodies to fight what is foreign.

Passive Immunity – what occurs when your body receives what would be an active immunization rather than making the immunization on its own. This type of immunity will only last for a short period. Immunity can also be transferred by blood or blood products.

Principle of Active Immunity

The principle behind how your body becomes immune to disease after contracting it or through a vaccine produces what is called humoral immunity. Humeral Immunity involves antibodies that help your body make what are called lymphocytes. Lymphocytes essentially create what are called memory cells to protect you from what you contract in the future.

The principle of Immunity entails what happens when you contract a disease, and what comes after that. When artificial immunity occurs, what it does is what tells your body what to expect and what to fight against in the future.

How Active Immunity Works:

It work by what is known as both humoral and cell-mediated responses. Humoral Immunity occurs when the antibody response kicks in what activates B cells to make what is called immunoglobulins. Immunoglobulins, also known as antibodies, what they do is what start what are called macrophages which destroy foreign invaders that enter your bloodstream and what they encounter, such as what would be a virus. Cell-mediated what occurs when what are called T cells activate what is known as the cell-mediated response. The cell-mediated response that it does destroys foreign invaders, such as what would be bacteria in your bloodstream and what they encounter in different areas of your body.

Active Immunity vs. Passive Immunity

There is known what is called active Immunity, which can be natural or artificial, and passive immunity, which occurs when your body produces antibodies for what it has not encountered. Passive Immunity happens in newborns after they are born until their immune system develops. It also occurs when what is called passive immunization happens when what is termed vaccines are administered to someone for what they don’t have instead of what they do.

Active Immunity

Example of Active Immunity

Let’s say Hepatitis A happens when what is called viral particles enter your bloodstream. Let’s also express that you have not contracted this disease before. When you have not acquired the disease before, your body produces lymphocytes to fight against viruses that enter your bloodstream. When the humoral response occurs, this triggers B cells to produce antibodies against viruses that enter your bloodstream in the future. This happens when you contract a disease for the first time, and it creates Immunity, which makes your body immune to what you have gained.