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I understand that some proportion of individuals will fail to develop immunity from a single dose of a vaccine. Rather than test every member of the target population following each vaccination, it is more economical to administer multiple doses to increase the population immunity rate.

But what determines how many doses are indicated for a particular vaccine, and how widely they are spaced? Are these variables rigorously optimized, or are they just accepted heuristics?

E.g., two doses of MMR are indicated, separated by at least 3 years. Three doses of HPV are indicated, separated by 2 and then 3 months. Four doses of IPV are recommended, as are five doses of DTaP!

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  • $\begingroup$ Have you done any research into this? It would seem to be easy to Google. Please share what you found and why this doesn't answer your question. $\endgroup$ – anongoodnurse Jul 7 '17 at 3:25
  • $\begingroup$ @anongoodnurse: Best I could find was this, which describes different immunological mechanisms, but which does not answer this quesiton. Also, this explaining that it's always cheaper to add another dose than to titrate a sample from an individual to determine their acquired immunity. $\endgroup$ – feetwet Jul 7 '17 at 3:30
  • $\begingroup$ You should be editing this information into your question. :) $\endgroup$ – anongoodnurse Jul 7 '17 at 4:39

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