Smallpox

Smallpox as Biological Weapons?

As biological weapons go, anthrax is nowhere as terrifying as several others, says Jim Matthews, an associate professor of pharmacy at Northeastern University. Smallpox would be a lot worse. The government now has about 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine on hand. Experiments are getting underway to see whether it can be diluted so it could be administered to more people, and still be effective....

Is Smallpox Threat Real ?

Smallpox, a highly contagious virus that kills at least 30 percent of its victims and disfigures many who survive, was eradicated from the globe more than two decades ago. Scientists retained stocks of the variola virus, which causes the disease, and stored them in secure laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia, and Moscow, Russia. A smallpox attack is just one of many potential bioterrorism threats, bu...

Smallpox Vaccine May Help Fight Cervical Cancer

A modified version of the smallpox vaccine is being tested against cervical cancer. Human papilloma virus (HPV) is associated with 95% of cervical cancer cases, but not everyone with the virus develops the cancer. Cervical cancer affects about 465,000 women worldwide each year and causes 300,000 deaths. If it is diagnosed and treated in its earliest stages there is a high survival rate. // <b...

Smallpox Would Spread Rapidly

Smallpox was eradicated by 1979 and vaccination against the disease gradually ended around the world. But stockpiles of the smallpox virus remain in laboratories in the US, Russia and possibly other nations.// Recent fears of bioterrorism have ignited concerns that these stockpiles could be used to introduce the potentially deadly disease into the population, which is at present ill-prepared to d...

Problematic Use of smallpox vaccine

The USA is accumulating an abundant supply of smallpox vaccine, but health officials say they are not recommending that it be widely used- yet. The vaccine currently on hand, 16.8 million doses in a government stockpile// and more than 80 million doses that drug maker Aventis Pasteur says it will add to that, is safe and effective but can cause problems. Many people develop painful swelling aroun...

Drug Firm Offers to Donate Smallpox Vaccine

There is no treatment for smallpox, which kills about 30% of its victims and leaves others covered in sores. But giving a vaccine within days of exposure can protect against illness. A French drug company offered to donate up to 90 million doses of decades-old smallpox vaccine and the United States said it would accept the supplies if they are still effective against the deadly disease. // <br...

Penn Researchers Throw Light on the Structure Of Smallpox Virus Protein

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have shown the form of a crucial smallpox virus and the manner with which it attaches// itself to the DNA .The enzyme, which is named, as a topoisomerase has become a very important drug target for devising novel methods to combat small pox. "This enzyme is one of the most closely studied DNA-modifying enzymes in biology...

Toddler Infected With Rare Side Effect of Smallpox Vaccine

In a gut wrenching tragedy a U.S soldier father passed on a rare side effect of the smallpox vaccination he had taken, eczema vaccinatum, to his 2-year-old son.// The boy who is currently being treated at University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital has developed a virulent rash over 80 percent of his body. Eczema vaccinatum is an unusual side effect of the smallpox vac...

New Evidence Links Smallpox Vaccination Side Effects to Genetic Factors

Boffins have found new evidence that supports the link between genetic factors and certain adverse reactions related to smallpox vaccination . Immunization with live virus particles, as in the smallpox vaccine, is sometimes found to cause reactions that range from fatigue to serious illness. The study was conducted by a team of researchers led by Samuel L. Stanley Jr....

New Smallpox Vaccine Contract: Five Years in the Making

On December 13, 2002, fifteen months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush went to Room 450 of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House and said: "We know that smallpox still exists in laboratories, and we believe that regimes hostile to the United States may possess this dangerous virus...Our government has no information...

HHS Buys Next Generation Smallpox Vaccine

WASHINGTON, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt announced today that HHS has awarded a contract for $500 million to Bavarian Nordic A/S of Copenhagen, Denmark to manufacture and deliver 20 million doses of a next generation modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) smallpox vaccine. The vaccine would be recommended in the event of a smallpox outbreak to protect people in the United States who have wea...

Smallpox Alert in Northeast

The central government has sounded a health alert in India's northeast asking authorities to take immediate precautionary measures following reports of a smallpox outbreak in Bangladesh and Myanmar, officials said Monday. "Following the centre's instruction, the Tripura government has made arrangements for free consultation and health checkups in all the districts and sub-divisions...

Toddler Infected With Rare Side Effect Of Smallpox Vaccination Recovering

The quote there is nothing as lovely as the feet of those who bring good tidings, could not be more apt . There is finally, good news from the University of Chicago Comer Childrens Hospital, which was witness to one of the most horrific side effects of the smallpox vaccine, and unfortunately, on a toddler, of 2 years. The little boy spent seven weeks in the hospital and nearly die...

Study Finds That Lincoln Suffered from Smallpox During Gettysburg Speech

US President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address, he was in the early stages of a deadly form of smallpox, a new study by two University of Texas researchers, has revealed. Some historians, who recognized that Lincoln was ill, following his Gettysburg speech, asserted that the President was suffering from a very mild form of smallpox, one that occurs in previous...

Genetic Variations Leads to Fever After Smallpox Vaccination

St. Louis researchers have identified common DNA variations that underlie susceptibility to fever after smallpox vaccination. Most of the eight genetic alterations the scientists identified increased the likelihood of fever after smallpox vaccination. A few, however, reduced fever risk. The studys results raise the possibility the same genetic variations linked to fever following smal...