http://www.whale.to/vaccine/adjuvants.html
IMMUNOLOGY PRINCIPLES: ANTIBODY RESPONSE
To explain the action of adjuvants, we should look into immunology.
The theory of vaccine efficacy is based on the ability of vaccines to evoke the formation of antibodies. This is of varying efficacy, depending on the nature of the antigen(s) and the amount of antigenic substance administered.
However, the mechanisms for the diversity of immune reactions are complex, and to this day are not quite known and understood. There are numerous theories, the favoured one being antibody response as the sign of immunisation (acquiring immunity).
Specific immunity to a particular disease is generally considered to be the result of two kinds of activity: the humoral antibody and the cellular sensitivity.
The ability to form antibodies develops partly
in utero and partly after birth in the neonatal period. In either case, immunological competence—the ability to respond immunologically to an antigenic stimulus—appears to originate with the thymic activity.
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Then there is this :
Licensed inactivated vaccines for seasonal or pandemic influenza are formulated to contain a preset amount of hemagglutinin (HA), the critical antigen to elicit protection.
Current methods to establish the HA concentration of vaccines rely on indirect measurements that are subject to considerable experimental variability.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TD4-4S5V230-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_doc anchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=958701723&_rerunOrigin =google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0& _userid=10&md5=fc874480a5c0427d4e7be1c3f388a2e1