Who shouldn’t take a live vaccine? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Vaccines are public health success stories, with the most effective ones often what’s called ‘live attenuated,’ meaning they do replicate in our bodies but don’t cause infection. Vaccine expert Anna Durbin at Johns Hopkins says there are people who shouldn’t take this type of vaccine.

Durbin: People who may be on chemotherapy that affects their immune system, people who have natural immunodeficiencies, they don't make good antibodies or they don't make good what we call T cell responses. We're seeing a real expansion of that with the monoclonal antibody therapies that we're seeing for people who have autoimmune diseases. So we see that with rheumatoid arthritis, with sarcoidosis, with different autoimmune diseases the treatments that we give suppress that immune response and so those people may not be candidates for live attenuated vaccines.   :32

Durbin says there are other types of vaccines that may be suitable for people who can’t take live vaccines, so talk with your provider to find out, as these groups of people may also experience more severe infections if unvaccinated. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.