Editorial Note of Journal of Neonatal Biology

Abstract

Vaccination stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose. While vaccines have been tremendously successful in reducing the incidence of serious infectious diseases, newborns remain particularly vulnerable in the first few months of their life to life-threatening infections. A number of challenges exist to neonatal vaccination. However, recent advances in the understanding of neonatal immunology offer insights to overcome many of those challenges.