Link to polio vaccine is ruled out in CJD 'cluster'
By David Derbyshire
(Filed: 18/12/2001)

SCIENTISTS investigating a suspected CJD cluster in Southampton have ruled out links with a polio vaccine given to two victims before they developed the disease.

The Government's advisory body on BSE and CJD said yesterday that there was no evidence to connect the vaccine, part of a large batch distributed across Britain in 1994, with human mad cow disease.

But the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) called for better records of vaccines to make it easier to investigate future health concerns. A brand of oral polio vaccine made from calf foetus serum was withdrawn last year after fears that it could be contaminated with BSE.

SEAC revealed that it had examined a potential link between the vaccine and a mini "cluster" of five cases of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease cases in Southampton.

Two of the victims were given oral vaccine in 1994 from the same batch of 80,000 doses. Both developed vCJD around five or six years later.

Prof Peter Smith, the SEAC chairman, said the batch was identical to five million doses produced that year using foetal calf tissue and that the link was not confirmed.

He said: "The fact that two had received vaccine from this batch does not strike us as reason for changing the advice that had previously been given that the risks associated with polio vaccine were likely to be very low indeed."

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