http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7363/513/c
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Janice Hopkins Tanne
Smallpox vaccination given more than 35 years ago may still offer important protection, says a new report based on laboratory studies by immunologists at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2002;347:689-90)[Full Text]. The report is important because of fears that terrorists may use smallpox virus as a weapon.
After smallpox was declared eliminated by the World Health Organization in 1980, immunisation stopped, leaving most younger people vulnerable. The smallpox virus is said to be held only at secure sites in the United States and Russia, but rogue scientists may have taken it to other nations. Stocks of smallpox vaccine are now being urgently replenished.
When smallpox was still endemic it was recommended that revaccinations occur
frequently
as often as
every year for hospital workers who may be exposed.
Dr Jeffrey Frelinger, professor and chairman of the Department of Immunology at the University of North Carolina, and postdoctoral researcher Dr Mohammed Garba looked at the CD8 T lymphocyte responses to vaccinia virus. Their study included one unvaccinated person, four people who had been vaccinated in the last five years because they worked with vaccinia virus, and nine people who had been vaccinated from six to more than 35 years previously.
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Collections under
which this article appears:Medical
Consequences of Conflict Other
Infectious Diseases Other
Public Health |
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OF THE PUBLISHER, AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED OR INTENDED AS PROVIDING MEDICAL OR
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