autovaccination
|au-to-vac-ci-na-tion|
🇺🇸
/ˌɔːtəˌvæk.sɪˈneɪ.ʃən/
🇬🇧
/ˌɔːtəʊˌvæk.sɪˈneɪ.ʃən/
vaccine made from oneself
Etymology
'autovaccination' originates from Modern Latin/Neo-Latin (formed in medical usage), combining the Greek prefix 'auto-' (from Greek 'αὐτός') meaning 'self' and 'vaccination' (from Latin 'vaccinatio', from 'vacca' meaning 'cow').
'autovaccination' is formed by combining the prefix 'auto-' (Greek) with the English word 'vaccination', which itself came into English via Latin 'vaccinatio' and French 'vaccination' after Edward Jenner's work; the compound emerged in 20th-century medical literature to describe vaccines derived from the patient's own material.
Initially, 'vaccination' referred specifically to inoculation using matter from cows (from Latin 'vacca'), but over time 'vaccination' broadened to mean immunization in general; 'autovaccination' thus came to mean 'immunization using one's own material' rather than anything to do with cows.
Meanings by Part of Speech
Noun 1
a medical procedure or approach in which a vaccine is prepared from a patient’s own tissues, cells, or microbial isolates and used to elicit an immune response in that same patient (also called autologous vaccination).
Researchers investigated autovaccination as a personalized treatment, preparing a vaccine from the patient’s tumor cells.
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Noun 2
(Historical/colloquial) The practice of deliberately exposing oneself to a disease agent derived from one's own bodily material to induce immunity; largely obsolete or experimental and distinct from mainstream vaccination programs.
In some older case reports, autovaccination referred to self-inoculation with cultured bacteria from a chronic wound.
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Last updated: 2025/11/29 16:04