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Many vaccines contain only parts of viruses or bacteria, usually proteins or sugars from the surface. In these cases the bacteria or viruses will either be severely weakened (attenuated) so that they cannot cause disease in healthy people, or killed altogether (inactivated). Some vaccines contain whole bacteria or viruses. Hundreds of thousands of individual vaccines could be made from a single teaspoon of active ingredient. This is several thousand times more than the quantity of the active ingredient you would find in most vaccines. To give some idea of how small these quantities are, one paracetamol tablet contains 500 milligrams of the drug. Vaccines contain tiny quantities of active ingredients – just a few micrograms (millionths of a gram) per vaccine. They challenge the immune system so that it makes antibodies to fight the disease (see our animation on 'How do vaccines work?'). These are the parts of the vaccine made from viruses or bacteria (also called ‘antigens’). For further information about vaccine ingredients, contact the manufacturer of the vaccine. See the list of PILs and SPCs on our links page. Even common salt (sodium chloride), which is essential for normal functioning of the body, is harmful in large quantities.Ī list of vaccine ingredients can be found on the Patient Information Leaflet (PIL) and Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) sheet for each vaccine. If you look up some vaccine ingredients on the internet you may read that they could be harmful, but most of them are present in vaccines in amounts that are completely normal for our bodies. The exception to this is the small number of people who may be severely allergic to a vaccine ingredient, even if it is present only in trace amounts (for example, egg proteins or antibiotics used in vaccine manufacture). People may think of formaldehyde as a man-made chemical, but in small quantities it is also found naturally in the bloodstream.Īll vaccine ingredients are present in very small quantities, and there is no evidence that they cause harm in these amounts. For example, many vaccines contain salts based on sodium and potassium (see the section on 'Acidity regulators'), which are essential for life. However, it is important to remember that many of the substances used in vaccines are found naturally in the body. If they do, they are present only in trace amounts. Products used in making vaccines or growing the active ingredients may not remain in the final vaccine at all. Added ingredients are present in very small quantities (usually a few milligrams). Unlike food products, the list of vaccine ingredients may include products used during the manufacturing process, even if they do not remain in the finished product. All other ingredients weigh a few milligrams (thousandths of a gram) or even less. Most injected vaccines contain 0.5 millilitres of liquid, in other words a few drops. Apart from this, the main ingredient in vaccines is water. The key ingredient in all vaccines is one or more active ingredients (see below). Human cell strains, animal cell strains and GMOs.