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April 11, 2003

INTERNATIONAL IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"Theory Links Hepatitis C to Polio Syringes in Italy"

Reuters Health Information Services (www.reutershealth.com) (04/10/03); Lorenzi, Rossella

Researchers from Italy's National Cancer Institute are theorizing that glass syringes used to administer the polio vaccine during the 1950s and 1960s may have been poorly cleaned and could thus be responsible for the spread of the hepatitis C virus from person to person in part of the country.  According to Dr. Maurizio Montella, whose findings are published in this month's Journal of Medical Virology, this could explain why southern Italy has a high rate of hepatitis C infection.  Dr. Montella says that there was already indirect evidence linking the syringes to high hepatitis rates.  He and his colleagues looked at a previous study and found that people born between the 1940s and early 1960s were almost three times as likely as younger people to have the virus.

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