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April 8, 2002

INTERNATIONAL IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"Ottawa Probes Vaccine Cancer Link"

Calgary Herald (www.calgaryherald.com) (04/06/02) P. A9; Page, Shelley

In Canada, there are growing concerns that a monkey virus called Simian Virus 40 (SV40), which contaminated batches of polio vaccine given to millions of Canadians four decades ago, could be causing cancer.  Medical researchers had initially thought the monkey virus was linked to rare lung, bone, and brain cancers; however, two recent studies in The Lancet revealed that traces of SV40 were found in the tumors of almost 50 percent of patients with a form of cancer known as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, cases of which have doubled over the last three decades.  The Canadian Bone Marrow Transplant Group and Health Canada are now planning to test cell-lines derived from 20 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients that are being stored at a hospital in Toronto.  In the 1950s, early versions of the Salk polio virus were cultured in kidney cells from dead monkeys.  Production of these vaccines ceased after it was discovered that SV40 had contaminated the batches, but approximately 9 million people in Canada are thought to have received the vaccine between 1955 and 1961. 

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