Adventitious Agents and Smallpox Vaccine in Strategic National Stockpile

ACAM2000™: The new smallpox vaccine for United States Strategic National Stockpile

Smallpox was eradicated more than 30 years ago, but heightened concerns over bioterrorism have brought smallpox and smallpox vaccination back to the forefront. The previously licensed smallpox vaccine in the United States, Dryvax (Wyeth Laboratories, Inc.), was highly effective, but the supply was insufficient to vaccinate the entire current US population. Additionally, Dryvax had a questionabl...

Evaluation of Adventitious Agents in MMR & Oral Poliomyelitis Vaccines

Background and Aims: Adventitious agents, especially viral agents are among the most important concerns in viral vaccines. Viral contamination of biological products may arise from the original source of the reagents such as, serum, trypsin, animal or human derived media components or cell culture and working seed or cross contamination of vaccine during production. In this study, adventitious ...

What defines a public health emergency? An analysis of the strategic national stockpile and the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act: the need for prevention of nonterror national medical emergencies.

Adventitious Viruses and Smallpox Vaccine

To the Editor: Recently, Murphy and Osburn (1) strongly argued for testing old smallpox vaccine stocks made in animal skin for adventitious infectious agents such as viruses, mycoplasmas, and eventually, prions. Their argument appears clearly justified after unexpected cases of myopericarditis occurred during recent campaigns of smallpox vaccinations in the United States (2). To the long list o...

Current status of smallpox vaccine.

To the Editor: The possible use of smallpox virus as a weapon by terrorists has stimulated growing international concern and led to a recent review by the World Health Organization of the global availability of smallpox vaccine. This review found approximately 60 million doses worldwide, with little current vaccine manufacture, although limited vaccine seed remains available (1). Ongoing discus...