One of the most celebrated achievements of immunology and modern medicine is the eradication of the dreaded plague smallpox. From the introduction of smallpox vaccination by Edward Jenner, to its popularization by Louis Pasteur, to the eradication effort led by Donald Henderson, this story has many lessons for us today, including the characteristics of the disease and vaccine that permitted its...

Smallpox has been a major epidemic disease since the dawn of history. Caused by the variola virus – a large DNA virus, which is a strict human pathogen with no carrier state. The virus belongs to a related group of viruses causing pox-like infections in other mammals. The milder infections caused by these animal viruses in humans generate excellent immunity against smallpox, as does natural or ...

We designed, optimized, and extensively tested several sensitive and specific real-time PCR assays for rapid detection of both smallpox and pan-orthopox virus DNAs. The assays are based on TaqMan 3'-minor groove binder chemistry and were performed on both the rapid-cycling Roche LightCycler and the Cepheid Smart Cycler platforms. The hemagglutinin (HA) J7R, B9R, and B10R genes were used as targ...

possibility of the natural reservoir of variola virus among wild animals grew more important. Monkeypox virus was isolated from 20 clinical smallpox cases in West Africa among populations with close contacts with wild monkeys, but its epidemiological and virological differentiation from variola viruses was not difficult. During the virological studies of human monkeypox virus infections, a grou...

Currently, a number of assays measure Orthopoxvirus neutralization with serum from individuals, vaccinated against smallpox. In addition to the traditional plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT), newer higher throughput assays are based on neutralization of recombinant vaccinia virus, expressing reporter genes such as β-galactosidase or green fluorescent protein. These methods could not be...