Polyvalent vaccine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dictionary.com defines polyvalent as:

Acting against or interacting with more than one kind of antigen, antibody, toxin, or microorganism.

A polyvalent vaccine, also known as multivalent vaccine, is a vaccine that has more than one type of pathogen. These vaccines are useful because they can vaccinate a person against more than one strain of a disease, whereas with a monovalent vaccine (only one type of pathogen), multiple shots would be required to achieve the same vaccine protection.