CIDRAP [Journal of the American Medical Association] – Exactly 100 of about 38,000 civilians who received smallpox shots in a federal program in 2003 suffered serious adverse events afterward, signaling that the program successfully screened out most people at risk for complications.
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Reuters [Clinical Infectious Diseases] – About three quarters of patients with monkeypox have affected lymph nodes, a condition that is rare in cases of smallpox or chicken pox, investigators report in two articles in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. Other common features of monkeypox, in addition to rash and fever, include chills, sore throat, headache and muscle pain. Considered a possible agent of bioterrorism, it is important to recognize signs and symptoms of monkeypox and to differentiate it from other pox virus infections
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Washington Post – The voluntary smallpox vaccination campaign announced by President Bush three years ago did not produce the plethora of side effects many in the medical community feared, an analysis released yesterday found. But it remains a mystery why a few dozen adults who were inoculated suffered severe, and in some cases fatal, heart complications.
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Infection Control Today [Journal of the American Medical Association] – There was a low rate of life-threatening adverse reactions to the smallpox vaccine administered to potential first responders to a bioterrorism incident, possibly attributable to rigorous vaccine safety screening and educational programs, according to a study to be published in the Dec. 7, 2005 issue of JAMA.
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Washington Post – New vaccine technologies are emerging that offer a fresh chance to devise a strategy against smallpox, the most fearsome potential weapon in the bioterror arsenal.
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Bismarck Tribune – A construction project is halted because of concerns that it could unearth smallpox from a nearby Native American burial ground.
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Reuters – Wyethís smallpox vaccine will come with a new ìblack-box warningî about cardiac problems that have occurred after immunization.
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Science Daily [Journal of Virology] – Researchers have made a major advancement toward protecting society against a smallpox outbreak by identifying an antibody in humans that quickly fights the smallpox virus.
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Reuters – The United States has issued a tender for up to 80 million doses of a smallpox vaccine to guard against terrorist attack.
Medical News Today [Nature Medicine] – Researchers at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute (VGTI) at Oregon Health & Science University have developed new diagnostic methods to better detect future monkeypox or smallpox outbreaks. The research also sheds new light on the 2003 monkeypox outbreak in the Midwest — monkeypox is closely related to smallpox. This new information suggests that the 2003 outbreak was larger than the 72 cases reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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Associated Press [Nature Medicine] – Some people infected in the monkeypox outbreak in 2003 were protected by previous smallpox vaccinations, a finding that could be of a benefit in the event of a bioterror attack.
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Associated Press – Monkeypox, a less deadly relative of smallpox, kills up to 10 percent of its victims in Africa. Yet a monkeypox outbreak two years ago in the United States killed no one, and scientists have wondered why. Now they have a good idea. New research finds that there are two distinct strains of the virus, and that the U.S. outbreak involved the weaker West African one rather than the more deadly Congolese one.
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NBC – Scientists are testing thousands of mushrooms in search of potential treatments for smallpox.
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BBC – Members of the World Health Organization meeting in Geneva have approved recommendations for further research on the smallpox virus.
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Reuters – United Nations experts on Wednesday urged global health officials to ban scientists from making the deadly smallpox virus in laboratories for fear it could fall into terrorist hands.
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Guardian – US scientists are awaiting World Health Assembly approval to begin experiments to genetically modify the smallpox virus.
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CIDRAP [Clinical Infectious Diseases] – In a recent study, some laboratory and public health workers who received smallpox shots reported several side effects that have not shown up in other studies, including joint and abdominal pain, backache, and breathing difficulty.
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UPI [Emerging Infectious Diseases] – The anthrax letter attacks in 2001 are not the first time an infectious agent has been spread through the mail. A recent article in a scientific journal describes two outbreaks of smallpox in 1901 that were attributed to infected letters, and bioweapon experts said it is possible terrorists could spread the deadly disease in this manner today.
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MedPage – Preliminary results of a phase I/II clinical trial of an investigational live attenuated smallpox vaccine indicate that it achieves a good immune response without triggering any serious adverse effects.
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Reuters – A product taken from the blood of people who have been vaccinated for smallpox was approved on Friday to use to treat reactions from the shot,
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Science Daily [Journal Of Clinical Investigation] – Natural or deliberate exposure to smallpox poses a great health threat, especially since routine smallpox vaccinations have been discontinued and no clinically approved treatment currently exists. In the February 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Ellis Reinherz and colleagues from Harvard Medical School propose a new antiviral therapy – a low molecular weight inhibitor of signaling mediated by the smallpox growth factor (SPGF).
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New Scientist [Journal of Clinical Investigation] – Cancer drugs have unexpectedly led to an entirely new way to beat viral infections – and particularly smallpox – a new study suggests.
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Reuters – Work has started on building a 200 million-dose stockpile of smallpox vaccines but it could take up to three years to complete, according to World Health Organization (WHO) officials.
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San Francisco Examiner – An interview with Dr. Larry Brilliant, who worked on the United Nations’ successful campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s, and is a leading expert in the study of infectious diseases that can be used as bio-weapons.
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Associated Press – Mindful of the threat of a biological attack by terrorists, health ministers from developed countries joined forces Friday to press for the creation of an rapid-reaction center and the stockpiling of smallpox vaccines.
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Technology Review – The U.S. continues to push the World Health Organization to open up frozen smallpox supplies for testing, which could lead to better viral vaccinations. Others fear that may put a deadly virus in the hands of terrorists.
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Medical News Today [Journal of Virology] – Using bioinformatics and computer modeling, researchers from North Carolina and Oregon have identified a new class of compounds that block a key step in the lifecycle of the smallpox virus and have little toxicity to human cells.
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The Scientist – When the World Health Organization’s (WHO) external advisory committee on smallpox recommended last week that WHO allow the two research teams still possessing the virus to insert a green fluorescent marker gene into it to test the efficacy of potential anti-smallpox drugs, the committee also made at least six other research recommendations, according to a WHO spokesman, including at least two that some researchers find controversial.
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Associated Press – Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc. will add black box warnings linking its smallpox vaccine to heart inflammation, the government announced Friday.
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New York Times – An advisory committee to the World Health Organization has recommended that Russian and American scientists be allowed to manipulate a gene in the smallpox virus for the first time to speed up discovery of drugs effective against the virus, the agency said today.
PR Newswire – Smallpox now represents a bigger threat than ever, according to a 2002 US Intelligence Review indicating potential interest of Al Qaeda in the virus. This fear has been endorsed by reports from Russian defectors concerning illegal production of virulent strains of the virus after all strains were supposedly destroyed.
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NIH [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences] – Results of a new study in monkeys offer scientists a rare glimpse of how, on a molecular level, the smallpox virus attacks its victims. The findings shed light on how the virus caused mass death and suffering, and will help point the way to new diagnostics, vaccines and drugs that would be needed in the event of a smallpox bioterror incident.
CIDRAP [Journal of Infectious Diseases] – The antiviral drug cidofovir is one of very few agents used to treat serious side effects of smallpox vaccination. In a recent study, a topical form of cidofovir worked better than an intravenous formulation to protect mice from the effects of vaccinia, the smallpox vaccine virus.
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News-Medical.net [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences] – Scientists have made significant progress in developing an animal model of smallpox that closely resembles human disease, which will be necessary for testing of future vaccines and potential treatments. A study, published in this week’s online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to demonstrate that variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox, can produce lethal disease in monkeys.
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Reuters [Journal of Infectious Diseases] – A variety of potentially serious infections can occur after immunization with the smallpox vaccine. Now, findings from an animal study suggest that a topical form of cidofovir, an anti-viral drug, is better than an intravenous form at treating such infections.
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Reuters [Journal of the American Medical Association] – Heavily diluted doses of existing smallpox vaccine remain effective, which means the U.S. stockpile of the vaccine can be stretched if needed.
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The Guardian – A review of the book “The Life and Death of Smallpox.”
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Medical News Today [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences] – The best approach for averting the deadly spread of smallpox following release of the virus by terrorists may rest with the establishment of a major collaborative research effort to develop new antiviral drugs that would involve the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, universities and government agencies, according to a new report from the National Academies.
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Reuters – Australian scientists have identified the immune response that determines why some mice are infected with mousepox and others are not, a discovery that could lead to better protection for humans in a bio-terror attack.
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CIDRAP – In an effort to shed some light on a potential side effect of smallpox vaccination, researchers are launching a federally funded pilot study of the effects of smallpox vaccines on cardiac cells in mice.
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UPI – U.S. and international researchers have found a mechanism in mice that could lead to improved protection against smallpox for humans.
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Agence France Presse – Mass vaccination in the event of a smallpox attack by terrorists may not be needed, provided the authorities detect the outbreak quickly and target individuals who are a potential transmission risk, a study says.
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Reuters – A vaccine using just four genes can protect monkeys against monkeypox and, in principle, its much more deadly cousin smallpox.
More on this story from the Associated Press.
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New York Times Magazine – When a 10-year-old contracted monkeypox, medical professionals had to confront their own fears.
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CIDRAP [Clinical Infectious Diseases] – Ten US military personnel were found to be HIV-positive after they received smallpox shots in 2003, but they were not harmed by the vaccine, according to a new online report in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
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Washington Post – Buoyed by promising results in animal experiments, government officials are contemplating buying massive quantities of a new type of smallpox vaccine to supplement the national stockpile already assembled.
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The Guardian – British biotech company Acambis yesterday halted trials of the smallpox vaccine it is supplying for £300m to the US government’s anti-terrorist stockpile, after several volunteers developed myopericarditis.
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CIDRAP – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week published guidelines for the development of drugs to treat the side effects of smallpox vaccination, an area in which the federal government is investing substantial research funds.
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Johns Hopkins Newsletter – Smallpox eradicator D.A. Henderson, M.D. reflects upon his life and career.
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