What is the vaccination titer?
The vaccination titer is a measure of the body’s immunity to a particular disease after a previous vaccination. For this purpose, the concentration of antibodies present in the blood against the respective pathogen is measured.
Titer determination is time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, it is only performed in certain cases.
When is the vaccination titer determined?
After hepatitis vaccination, the titer should be determined routinely because relatively many vaccinated persons do not respond to the vaccination to the desired extent.
Rubella vaccine titer determination is useful in pregnant or unvaccinated women of childbearing age. This makes it possible to determine whether a woman is really immune to the disease. After all, a rubella infection during pregnancy can be life-threatening for the embryo.
To be able to determine a titer, the doctor needs blood serum. For this purpose, he takes some blood from a vein.
When is the vaccination titer too low?
Vaccination titers are usually divided into different levels – depending on how high the concentration of antibodies in the blood is. If the titer is too low, this can have various reasons:
- Some people do not respond or do not respond sufficiently to a vaccination (e.g., due to an immune deficiency) – they therefore produce no or hardly any antibodies.
- If a vaccine has been stored incorrectly (e.g. insufficiently refrigerated) or administered incorrectly (e.g. incorrectly injected), the vaccination may not have the desired effect – the body produces no or too few antibodies, so that the titer is then too low.
