Herd immunity

Herd immunity (also called herd effect, community immunity, population immunity, or social immunity) is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune. In a population in which a large number of individuals are immune, chains of infection are likely to be disrupted, which stops or slows the spread of disease. The greater the proportion of individuals in a community who are immune, the smaller the probability that those who are not immune will come into contact with an infectious individual. Herd immunity (also called herd effect, community immunity, population immunity, or social immunity) is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune. In a population in which a large number of individuals are immune, chains of infection are likely to be disrupted, which stops or slows the spread of disease. The greater the proportion of individuals in a community who are immune, the smaller the probability that those who are not immune will come into contact with an infectious individual. Individual immunity can be gained by recovering from an infection or through vaccination. Some individuals cannot become immune due to medical reasons and in this group herd immunity is an important method of protection. Once a certain threshold has been reached, herd immunity gradually eliminates a disease from a population. This elimination, if achieved worldwide, may result in the permanent reduction in the number of infections to zero, called eradication. This method was used for the eradication of smallpox in 1977 and for the regional elimination of other diseases. Herd immunity does not apply to all diseases, just those that are contagious, meaning that they can be transmitted from one individual to another. Tetanus, for example, is infectious but not contagious, so herd immunity does not apply. The term herd immunity was first used in 1923. It was recognized as a naturally occurring phenomenon in the 1930s when it was observed that after a significant number of children had become immune to measles, the number of new infections temporarily decreased, including among susceptible children. Mass vaccination to induce herd immunity has since become common and proved successful in preventing the spread of many infectious diseases. Opposition to vaccination has posed a challenge to herd immunity, allowing preventable diseases to persist in or return to communities that have inadequate vaccination rates. Some individuals either cannot develop immunity after vaccination or for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated. Newborn infants are too young to receive many vaccines, either for safety reasons or because passive immunity renders the vaccine ineffective. Individuals who are immunodeficient due to HIV/AIDS, lymphoma, leukemia, bone marrow cancer, an impaired spleen, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy may have lost any immunity that they previously had and vaccines may not be of any use for them because of their immunodeficiency. Vaccines are typically imperfect as some individuals' immune systems may not generate an adequate immune response to vaccines to confer long-term immunity, so a portion of those who are vaccinated may lack immunity. Lastly, vaccine contraindications may prevent certain individuals from becoming immune. In addition to not being immune, individuals in one of these groups may be at a greater risk of developing complications from infection because of their medical status, but they may still be protected if a large enough percentage of the population is immune. High levels of immunity in one age group can create herd immunity for other age groups. Vaccinating adults against pertussis reduces pertussis incidence in infants too young to be vaccinated, who are at the greatest risk of complications from the disease. This is especially important for close family members, who account for most of the transmissions to young infants. In the same manner, children receiving vaccines against pneumococcus reduces pneumococcal disease incidence among younger, unvaccinated siblings. Vaccinating children against pneumococcus and rotavirus has had the effect of reducing pneumococcus- and rotavirus-attributable hospitalizations for older children and adults, who do not normally receive these vaccines. Influenza (flu) is more severe in the elderly than in younger age groups, but influenza vaccines lack effectiveness in this demographic due to a waning of the immune system with age. The prioritization of school-age children for seasonal flu immunization, which is more effective than vaccinating the elderly, however, has shown to create a certain degree of protection for the elderly. For sexually transmitted infections (STIs), high levels of immunity in one sex induces herd immunity for both sexes. Vaccines against STIs that are targeted at one sex result in significant declines in STIs in both sexes if vaccine uptake in the target sex is high. Herd immunity from female vaccination does not, however, extend to homosexual males. If vaccine uptake among the target sex is low, then the other sex may need to be immunized so that that sex can be sufficiently protected. High-risk behaviors make eliminating STIs difficult since even though most infections occur among individuals with moderate risk, the majority of transmissions occur because of individuals who engage in high-risk behaviors. For these reasons, in certain populations it may be necessary to immunize high-risk persons or individuals of both sexes to establish herd immunity. Herd immunity itself acts as an evolutionary pressure on certain viruses, influencing viral evolution by encouraging the production of novel strains, in this case referred to as escape mutants, that are able to 'escape' from herd immunity and spread more easily. At the molecular level, viruses escape from herd immunity through antigenic drift, which is when mutations accumulate in the portion of the viral genome that encodes for the virus's surface antigen, typically a protein of the virus capsid, producing a change in the viral epitope. Alternatively, the reassortment of separate viral genome segments, or antigenic shift, which is more common when there are more strains in circulation, can also produce new serotypes. When either of these occur, memory T cells no longer recognize the virus, so people are not immune to the dominant circulating strain. For both influenza and norovirus, epidemics temporarily induce herd immunity until a new dominant strain emerges, causing successive waves of epidemics. As this evolution poses a challenge to herd immunity, broadly neutralizing antibodies and 'universal' vaccines that can provide protection beyond a specific serotype are in development. Serotype replacement, or serotype shifting, may occur if the prevalence of a specific serotype declines due to high levels of immunity, allowing other serotypes to replace it. Initial vaccines against Streptococcus pneumoniae significantly reduced nasopharyngeal carriage of vaccine serotypes (VTs), including antibiotic-resistant types, only to be entirely offset by increased carriage of non-vaccine serotypes (NVTs). This did not result in a proportionate increase in disease incidence though since NVTs were less invasive than VTs. Since then, pneumococcal vaccines that provide protection from the emerging serotypes have been introduced and have successfully countered their emergence. The possibility of future shifting remains, so further strategies to deal with this include expansion of VT coverage and the development of vaccines that use either killed whole-cells, which have more surface antigens, or proteins present in multiple serotypes. If herd immunity has been established and maintained in a population for a sufficient time, the disease is inevitably eliminated—no more endemic transmissions occurs. If elimination is achieved worldwide and the number of cases is permanently reduced to zero, then a disease can be declared eradicated. Eradication can thus be considered the final effect or end-result of public health initiatives to control the spread of infectious disease. The benefits of eradication include ending all morbidity and mortality caused by the disease, financial savings for individuals, health care providers, and governments, and enabling resources used to control the disease to be used elsewhere. To date, two diseases have been eradicated using herd immunity and vaccination: rinderpest and smallpox. Eradication efforts that rely on herd immunity are currently underway for poliomyelitis, though civil unrest and distrust of modern medicine have made this difficult. Mandatory vaccination may be beneficial to eradication efforts if not enough people choose to get vaccinated.