Immunization against smallpox (variola virus) with Dryvax, a live vaccinia virus (VV), was effective, but now safety is a major concern. To overcome this issue, subunit vaccines composed of VV envelope proteins from both forms of infectious virions, including the extracellular enveloped virion (EV) protein B5, are being developed. However, since B5 has 23 amino acid differences compared with it...

Smallpox in its endemic form in this country (variola minor or alastrim) is seen sporadically and as a rather mild disease. Variola major, on the other hand, is a serious epidemic disease, but fortunately is experienced rarely within the continental limits of the United States. In fact, in recent years it has occurred so infrequently that the experience gained in one outbreak is generally lost ...

We recently developed a set of seven resequencing GeneChips for the rapid sequencing of Variola virus strains in the WHO Repository of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In this study, we attempted to hybridize these GeneChips with some known non-Variola orthopoxvirus isolates, including monkeypox, cowpox, and vaccinia viruses, for rapid detection.

Marshall, Ronald G. (Army Chemical Corps, Fredrick, Md.), and Peter J. Gerone. Susceptibility of suckling mice to variola virus. J. Bacteriol. 82:15-19. 1961.-The susceptibility of suckling mice inoculated intraperitoneally or intracerebrally with variola virus was investigated. Data are presented that define the death patterns, the relationship of incubation period to dose of virus inoculated,...

The propagation of variola virus on the chlorioallantoic membrane of embryonated eggs was first reported by Torres and Teixeira (1935). Application of this finding was made by Lazarus et al. (1937), Buddingh (1938) and Markham and Bozalis (1939) who utilized embryonated eggs as a diagnostic medium. Nelson (1940, 1943), described the development and stability of variola virus in egg passage but ...

The transmission of smallpox by contaminated bed clothes (Stallybrass, 1931) and by dust from the floor of a patient's room (Downie and Dumbell, 1947) is evidence of the stability of variola virus under natural conditions. Experimental proof of the survival of variola virus in exudates and crusts from humans was reported by Buddingh (1938) and North et al., (1944). The former investigator noted...

Variola virus, the agent of smallpox, has a severely restricted host range (humans) but a devastatingly high mortality rate. Although smallpox has been eradicated by a World Health Organization vaccination program, knowledge of the evolutionary processes by which human super-pathogens such as variola virus arise is important. By analyzing the evolution of variola and other closely related poxvi...

Concern that smallpox virus may be used as a biological weapon of mass destruction has prompted calls for production of additional vaccine and new research into variola virus diagnostics and clinical interventions. Only 15.4 million doses of smallpox vaccine, produced approximately 20 years ago, exist in the United States (1). While virtually all lots remain potent, additional vaccine would cle...

THE decline of smallpox in Britain in the nineteenth century has long been recognized as a feature of the history of mortality in that period. The Royal Commission on Smallpox and Fever Hospitals of 1882, for example, traced the beginnings of this decline as far back as the 1780s.' Contemporaries, and historians subsequently, generally accepted that vaccination and its variants were the cause o...