WESH.com

Chicken Pox Outbreak Strikes School

 POSTED: 5:06 pm EST February 13, 2008

UPDATED: 11:52 am EST February 14, 2008

  KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- More than 20 students at Mill Creek Elementary School in Kissimmee have been diagnosed with the Varicella virus, more commonly known as chicken pox. The students affected have all had their mandatory chicken pox vaccine, but the CDC is now recommending two doses instead of one.As of Thursday morning, the chicken pox outbreak was contained to Mill Creek Elementary. A mass immunization program began at the school.

(So if one vaccine doesn't work you just need another one....good grief.)

Warning from flu jab inventor

http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5ixXz-8-OKh8FR1suzAa5dcZoWJtA

The inventor of the flu jab has warned it would do little to prevent a flu epidemic in Britain this winter, adding to fears about the vaccine's ineffectiveness. Dr Graeme Laver, who helped create the jab more than 40 years ago, believes it should not be relied upon to protect from a potentially severe flu epidemic. The Australian scientist also claims that people's lives could be saved if drugs such as Tamiflu and Relenza were used instead, once the disease has already struck.

These are both currently prescription-only in the UK but Dr Laver argues they should be sold over the counter so that they were more readily available to flu sufferers. He told the Daily Mail: "I have never been very impressed with its (the jab's) efficacy. It is better than nothing and I wouldn't want to advise people not to take it, but you can't rely on it doing any good. "If the seasonal flu is as bad as it was in Australia, you are in for a pretty bad time. You could have a really severe epidemic." An extra-bad flu season in Australia this year, which has seen the number of flu victims triple compared with last year, could herald problems for the UK as well, Dr Laver claims. His comments are set to fuel the debate about the efficacy of the flu jab, which has already come in for criticism. Last month a study by the Health Protection Agency (HPA) found the vaccine had no "protective effect" on lowering numbers of elderly people admitted to hospital with respiratory infections.

Researchers concluded that ministers should not rely solely on the flu vaccines to have a large effect on the pressure put on hospitals in winter from infections, including flu.

Despite vaccine, meningitis takes teen's life

Strain of bacterial disease kills immunized Bentley freshman

By Tania deLuzuriaga, Globe Staff  |  October 10, 2007

When Bentley College freshman Erin M. Ortiz went home sick last weekend, her mother did what any mother might do. She cooked comfort foods - corned beef, rice, and plantains - reflecting her daughter's Puerto Rican and Irish heritage.

"It was her favorite meal," said Brenda Rivera, a family friend.

But just hours after complaining of a headache and going to bed to sleep it off, Ortiz, 18, was dead of bacterial meningitis, a disease against which she had been vaccinated. Now, Ortiz's family hopes others will learn from their story.

"I'm all cried out," said her father, Raymond Ortiz. "I've got a hole in my heart. I don't think I'll ever be the same."

"We thought she'd be covered," he said. "They don't tell you that even if you get the vaccine, you're still susceptible."

Like most incoming freshmen, Ortiz was vaccinated last summer. Massachusetts law requires all college students to receive the vaccine. But it protects only about 85 percent of recipients and is not effective against all strains of the bacteria that cause infection in the brain and spinal fluid, which can result in brain damage, hearing loss, learning disability, or death.

"I wish we had a vaccine that worked 100 percent of the time," said Dr. Richard A. Moriarty, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "But this is certainly better than not being immunized."

Doctors aren't sure yet what strain of meningitis Ortiz contracted or if she was one of the rare people the vaccine does not protect.

Ortiz first complained of feeling sick on Friday when she arrived home in New Hampton, N.Y., to see her family for the long weekend. She went to bed early and slept until the next afternoon.

On Saturday, her mother, Cathy, cooked her favorite dinner. That night, she woke with a terrible headache and her parents decided to take her to the hospital.

"She got dressed and walked down to the car," Raymond Ortiz said. "She walked into the emergency room."

Not long after, though, Ortiz's condition went downhill and she developed a fever of nearly 105 degrees. A spinal tap revealed meningitis, something the family had thought was not possible.

"When they told us, we were like, 'How can this be?' " Raymond Ortiz said.

Though she initially appeared to respond to antibiotics, by 7 p.m. Sunday, Ortiz had taken a final turn for the worse, the pressure on her brain causing irreversible damage.

"There's a spiritual connection you have," Raymond Ortiz said. "We looked at her and we knew she wasn't there."

Doctors kept her alive until Monday morning to harvest her organs.

In response to the case, Bentley College officials have been in touch with more than 50 students who had contact with Ortiz. About 30 of them have been given preventive antibiotics, said Gerri Taylor, the director of health services at the college.

"We are working day and night to identify students who may have had contact with her," she said. "It's a health service's worst nightmare. It's a college's worst nightmare."

Bacterial meningitis is less common and more lethal than viral meningitis. The bacteria, which can live undetected in the nose or throat, are more common on college campuses, where students living in close quarters can easily spread the bacteria by sharing drinks, cigarettes, or lip gloss. Massachusetts recorded 21 cases of bacterial meningitis last year.

"It's a nasty little bug," Raymond Ortiz said. "It can take away your shining star in 36 hours, just like it did mine."

Tania deLuzuriaga can be reached at deluzuriaga@globe.com. 

MSNBC.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Flu vaccines may not save lives of elderly
No solid proof that shots prevent seniors from dying of disease, expert says
Reuters
Updated: 8:19 p.m. ET Sept 24, 2007
WASHINGTON - Getting an annual flu vaccine may not save the lives of seniors, and health officials may want to look at other ways to protect the elderly, researchers said on Monday.

No studies have conclusively proven that influenza shots prevent flu-related deaths in people over the age of 65, and some of the arguments that have been used to support this idea are based on faulty data, the researchers argue in the Lancet medical journal.

"We need to find a way to better estimate what the true benefits are," said Dr. Lone Simonsen of George Washington University.

Simonsen stressed that the elderly should continue to get flu shots. But she said health officials should also be looking for other ways to prevent some of the 36,000 deaths that come each year from flu in the United States alone.

"We can probably do more to protect the seniors," Simonsen said in a telephone interview.

Every year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launches a new flu vaccination campaign, citing the research that shows the deaths and the 200,000 hospitalizations every year from flu-related illness.

People over the age of 65 make up the majority of these cases, although some children also die every year from flu.

Less benefit
But Simonsen said that no one has actually ever shown that vaccination cuts deaths from flu among the elderly. She said there is plenty of evidence to show that, because older people have lower immune activity, they in fact get less benefit than younger people from vaccination.

"There is no question about the vaccine working in people under the age of 65," she said.

Simonsen said it may be possible to design vaccines that better protect the elderly — something the CDC is working on.

She said the CDC should also consider recommending more aggressive use of antiviral drugs that can treat and sometimes even prevent flu.

CDC flu expert Dr. Joe Bresee said his agency was considering these and other measures — including better vaccination of health care workers and recommending the widespread vaccination of schoolchildren.

"We know that school children are a big part of community transmission. They shed lots of virus. They shed it for long periods of time," Bresee said in a telephone interview.


Bresee and Simonsen said elderly people may get other benefits from the flu vaccine. Influenza shots do not always completely prevent infection, but they can make the illness less serious.

Simonsen noted that a vaccine now commonly used against several types of streptococcal bacteria, which cause pneumonia, meningitis and ear infections, did not show big effects across populations until it became a regular childhood vaccine.

Experts now agree that the vaccine not only protects children, but it protects the elderly people that the children may have been infecting before.

(c) Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20962720/

The Times of India -Breaking news, views. reviews, cricket from across India

Human trials of anti-AIDS vaccine stopped
25 Sep 2007, 0120 hrs IST,Kounteya Sinha,TNN

SMS NEWS to 58888 for latest updates
NEW DELHI: The world's most promising anti-AIDS vaccine candidate has failed. Instead of protecting volunteers from the deadly virus, the vaccine actually ended up infecting numerous participants during its large scale clinical trial on humans.

The vaccine also failed to reduce the amount of HIV in the blood of those who got infected, which was a second major goal of the study. US pharmaceutical giant Merck has now halted the V520 vaccine trial called STEP. The announcement came as a major blow to international hopes of developing a HIV vaccine that could stall the spread of this deadly disease.

Earlier experiments of the vaccine on animals and smaller tests on humans had showed promising results. This led Merck to start large scale human trials in US, Australia, Latin America and the Caribbean in 2004.

Over 3,000 high risk uninfected volunteers, aged between 18 and 45 years were recruited and three doses of the vaccine were injected over six months. The final result of the vaccine's efficacy was expected by the end of 2008. But initial analysis of 1,500 volunteers by the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board, monitoring the trial, concluded that the vaccine was failing hopelessly.

Of the 741 people who received at least one dose of the vaccine, 24 cases of infection were reported in 13 months. That compared with 21 infections out of 762 people who received injections of a dummy vaccine. The search to find an anti-AIDS vaccine has involved over 20 clinical trials with tests for over 30 vaccine candidates still under way.

Since HIV was first identified in 1981, 40 million people have been infected with the virus. Annually, an estimated 4 million new infections occur, of which 90% are in developing countries. Over the last 25 years, AIDS has claimed more than 25 million lives.

Merck Research Lab's president Peter Kim said: "We share in the disappointment of the research and HIV communities today."

kounteya.sinha@timesgroup.com
 

Effects of chickenpox vaccine fade over time

By Gene Emery

BOSTON (Reuters) - Merck's chickenpox vaccine Varivax not only loses its effectiveness after a while, but it has also changed the profile of the disease in the population, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

The study confirmed what doctors widely knew -- that the vaccine's protection does not last long.

And with fewer natural cases of the disease going around, unvaccinated children or children in whom the first dose of the vaccine fails to work have been catching the highly contagious disease later in life, when the risk of severe complications is greater, they said.

"If you're unvaccinated and you get it later in life, there's a 20-times greater risk of dying compared to a child, and a 10 to 15 times greater chance of getting hospitalized," said Jane Seward of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, who worked on the study.

The findings, reported fully for the first time in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, have already had an impact.

They helped prompt the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to recommend a booster shot between the ages of 4 and 6. The panel also said in its June 2006 report that children, adolescents and adults should be given boosters as well.

No one knows how long the effects of a second shot will last, said the research team, led by Sandra Chaves of the CDC.

http://uk.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=UKN1429730720070315

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070209/NEWS01/70209065

Friday, February 9, 2007
Chicken pox strikes Highland Elementary, 33 students ill

HIGHLAND — A chicken pox outbreak of three dozen cases has been reported at Highland Elementary School, according to the Ulster County Department of Health. Since Feb. 6, 33 students out of about 900 in the elementary school have been diagnosed with the aricella, or chickenpox, virus, said John McCarthy, district superintendent. "It's all in the elementary school right now," he said. "It seems to be contained there." According to public health director Dean Palen, an outbreak occurs when five or more cases are reported at once. The goal now, he said, is to prevent the disease's spread. "We're trying to contain it to make sure other students at the other schools don't get it," Palen said. Of the 33 students, all but two had been vaccinated for the virus.

According to a letter sent to district parents Thursday from the Department of Health, children who have already received one dose of chicken pox vaccine should receive a second dose if an appropriate amount of time has elapsed between shots. While not usually a serious illness, complications can cause pneumonia and in rare occasions can be life threatening, Palen said. Chickenpox is an infectious disease caused by a virus, which results in a blister-like rash, itching, tiredness and fever, according to the Center for Disease Control.

The county will offer a special chickenpox vaccine clinic for children 3-7 p.m. at the Health Department office, 570 Route 299, Highland. Appointments are required and the child's vaccine record must be brought to the appointment.

*If one doesn't work you just need another one...and another one....ect....

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3753266a11,00.html

Vaccinated youngsters still vulnerable to killer disease

04 August 2006

By KIM RUSCOE

Twenty fully vaccinated under-20-year-olds have contracted the epidemic strain of meningitis since immunisation began.

The Health Ministry says though five sufferers needed intensive care, none had died.

It was possible the vaccine had lessened the severity of their symptoms and saved their lives, meningococcal programme director Jane O'Hallahan said.

New figures show that this year five people have died from meningococcal disease – all in the past five weeks – compared with 14 for the whole of last year. The deaths follow the completion of the ministry's $222 million mass vaccination of under-20-year-olds against meningococcal B.

Meningococcal B reached epidemic proportions in 1991 and peaked in 2001, when 650 cases and 26 deaths were recorded. Dr O'Hallahan said the epidemic strain was still circulating and "looking for vulnerable children". "With herd immunisation, if you vaccinate enough of the population you give protection to those who are unvaccinated," she said.

"But that doesn't appear to be happening with meningococcal B." Of the 90 cases of meningococcal disease so far this year, 38 had been confirmed as the epidemic meningococcal B strain. A further 26 were awaiting identification and the rest were attributed to other meningococcal strains. Of the five who died last month, one had the less common meningococcal C. It was not yet known which strain caused the other four deaths.

Even the fully vaccinated were not invulnerable, Dr O'Hallahan said.

"No vaccine is 100 per cent effective."

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3537307a10,00.html

Ten vaccinated kids get disease
12 January 2006
By KELLY ANDREW and NZPA

Ten fully vaccinated children and teenagers have been infected with deadly meningococcal B disease since the immunisation programme began 18 months ago.


These "breakthrough" cases have been assessed by the Health Ministry, which is considering whether a fourth booster vaccination is needed for babies aged under six months.

Currently, three injections are given to children aged between six weeks and 20.

Of the 10 patients infected, one was a baby who began vaccinations before six months of age.

But national meningococcal vaccine strategy director Jane O'Hallahan said the decision about a fourth dose was not prompted by this case or the other meningococcal B vaccine breakthroughs. "It relates to the fact that infants frequently require four doses to get protection in relation to many different diseases," she said.

The vaccine manufacturer applied for a licence to give four doses to infants about six months ago, and Medsafe is expected to announce its decision in the next few days.

If approval is given for a fourth dose, about 50,000 babies could be affected before the vaccination programme ends in June.

Of the nine other fully vaccinated children who have contracted the disease since the programme began in July 2004, seven were over five years old and two were aged under five. Two were admitted to intensive care, and the others required treatment in hospital. All made a full recovery.

Dr O'Hallahan said the booster dose was being considered for infants under six months because their antibody response to immunisations was lower than older children, making them more vulnerable to the disease.

The ministry had no plans to introduce a fourth dose for other age groups because "there was no suggestion that it was warranted".

Ten breakthrough cases in 18 months was "relatively small" and within expected levels, Dr O'Hallahan said. No vaccine was 100 per cent effective.

She believed the programme was working.

Early results for Counties-Manukau, where vaccinations began, showed a drop in meningococcal B cases, and a national picture would emerge in the next six months.

It was possible that even though the vaccinated children had become infected, the vaccine had provided them with some protection by reducing the severity of the illness.

Since the vaccination programme began, more than 2.8 million doses have been administered. More than 1 million people have had at least one dose and more than 890,000 people have had all three doses.

There were 222 cases of meningococcal disease in the year to November last year, with 14 deaths. The average number of cases a year for the past five years was 490.
 

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=16474

Mail & Guardian

 Race is on to save first Aids vaccine. But does it work?  01 July 2003 07:32

  What was billed as the first Aids vaccine, with potential to end a global disaster that is killing millions every year, has ended with an ignominious whimper, as a Californian biotech company arranges to pull out of Thailand before the final analysis of its clinical trials involving 2 500 Thai volunteers.  Two US government health agencies and the Gates Foundation are in urgent talks about stepping into the breach.

The decision of VaxGen to cut its losses could mean the loss of invaluable data to scientists working in one of the most important research areas of our time. There are lessons to be learned even from the failures of a clinical trial, said a leading US scientist yesterday.  More importantly, she said, if the western world pulled out of a trial in this abrupt way, allowing all the efforts of the Thai participants and staff to go for naught, it could wreck the chances of future clinical trials in developing countries.  "Imagine going to a developing country again and asking them to roll up their sleeves for an efficacy trial if we didn't finish this one," said Peggy Johnstone, director of the vaccine and prevention research programme of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the government-funded bodies considering paying the bill. "We have to consider their side of it as well. The rest of the world is looking at what happens. They are going to want guarantees."  VaxGen is acting entirely on commercial grounds. "What has happened is that their board of directors has said they are not interested in completing the trials," said Dr Johnstone. "The staff, having put blood, sweat and tears into the trial, are very interested in completing it. We are in discussions now to decide what it will need to complete the trial.

From a scientific perspective, it would be a tremendous loss not to complete the trial and analyse the data."  VaxGen insisted it was not pulling out, but simply did not have the money to analyse all the data from the Thai trials. "The financial markets sent a loud and clear signal to us through the decline in our stock value and through conversations with members of the financial community. Their unambiguous response was, please do not spend more money than is necessary on your trials," said Lance Ignon, vice president of corporate communications.

He said the company would announce whether the vaccine had worked this winter.  The vaccine, called AidsVax, was way ahead of the rest of the field in terms of its progress through the clinical trials designed to prove whether any drug is safe and whether it works. A phase three trial -- the last in the process -- was carried out in the US and another in Thailand.  Few expected AidsVax to be the wonder drug everybody prays for, but even if it worked in some volunteers, it would have been of use. But on February 24 this year -- at midnight -- VaxGen released the results of the US trial. AidsVax was a failure.  But, to the fury of some scientists, who accused the company of manipulation of the data, VaxGen sent a hare running, claiming that the vaccine had worked in a small minority of those who were given it, from the black and Asian communities. The most marked effect, said the company, was a 78% reduction in infection among black volunteers. However, there were only 314 of them out of a total of 5 009.  One advantage of the big US health agencies, NIAID and the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), getting involved in finalising the data from Thailand might be, said Dr Johnstone, "that we maybe avoid some of the hoop-la that happened around the American trials."  Ignon, from VaxGen, said it was now for NIAID and CDC to work out how significant the ethnic minority findings from the US trial were.  The roller-coaster ride that VaxGen has offered the Aids research community may be inevitable from a private company that has to look to the markets to fund a risky business.

Don Francis, who formed VaxGen specifically to investigate an Aids vaccine, has his admirers for his determination to get involved. "It is overall disappointing that there aren't more private sector resources going into Aids vaccines, but it is understandable," said Johnstone. "Ninety per cent of the need is going to be in countries that can't pay for it."  Hype claim  Aids activists, however, point out that many scientists have argued for years that VaxGen's approach was not likely to work. "Based on the poor results from their trial here in the United States, I think they made a rational decision" to pull out of Thailand, said Gregg Gonsalves, director of treatment and prevention advocacy of Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York. "They've been hyping this vaccine for many years based on dubious data, but at some point, all the hype in the world can't salvage a product that doesn't work."  NIAID several years ago declined to give VaxGen funding for its vaccine research, he pointed out.  Richard Jefferys of the Treatment Action Group said that the decision on Thailand "speaks volumes about their confidence in the product to work", in spite of all the spin about ethnic groups in the US trial. "The positive thing about it is that they have shown that you can do a phase three efficacy trial [for an Aids vaccine]. It may be that there are unfortunately lessons about how careful people need to be in listening to the results of those trials." -

Mumps suspected in local child
Jul 31 2003 12:00AM  By  Staff Writer

Despite being properly immunized, a St. Francis child is believed to have had the first case of mumps in the city in at least a decade and a half, St. Francis Health Department officials said.

Public Health Administrator Kathy Scott said she could not disclose the gender or age of the child involved, saying only that it was a school-age child. The Health Department was notified of the possible case July 9. The parents took the child to a physician, and because of the symptoms, blood samples were drawn to test for mumps, said Jeff Berg, immunization adviser for the Wisconsin Immunization program, run by the Department of Health and Family Services, located in Madison. An antibody associated with mumps was found in the blood  samples, he said. More tests are under way to determine if the child had mumps or another virus that mimics mumps, Berg said. Mumps is a viral infection and is communicable, meaning it can be passed on to other people, Berg said. Both children and adults can get it. Like the flu, there is no treatment, and the disease basically has to run its course, Berg said. The illness was common before 1967, when the mumps vaccine was licensed. Before 1967 there were about 200,000 cases of mumps nationwide each year, according to the Mayo Clinic's Web site. In 2002, there were 74 cases in the country, with one being in Wisconsin, Berg said. Scott has not had a case of mumps reported in her 16 years with the St. Francis Health Department until now. Most people who get the mumps make a full recovery. To try to minimize the public health impact, Health Department officials have notified anyone that may have been in contact with the child and told them the symptoms to watch out for, Scott said. "The parents took the child in to a doctor because the child woke up with a small lump behind the ear and was feeling really tired," Scott said. Besides having tender salivary glands along the neck, there may be swelling in the cheeks, she said. The ill person may also have a low-grade fever and headache. The incubation period for mumps is 14 to 25 days, Berg said. People with the disease are sick about two to three weeks after exposure. The mumps is most contagious in the three days before and four days after the symptoms occur, Berg said. How long a person stays sick after the symptoms appear depends on the severity of the symptoms, Scott said. The child suspected of having had the mumps had received vaccinations for measles/mumps/rubella from the Health Department at two different times in the past, Scott said. The vaccine is one distributed by the state's immunization program to all health care providers. "Vaccines are not 100 percent effective," Scott said. "It's more like 96 or 97 percent." Berg said this case is a reminder to parents with children that are about to enter school for the first time to make sure they are up-to-date on their vaccinations. The first measles/mumps/rubella vaccine should be given after a child's first birthday and a second dose should be administered before a child enters elementary school. Berg said Scott followed the correct procedure in advising parents and others about the possible mumps exposure. "You have to start from the time when the symptoms first show up, and then go backward from there to see if you can find a source," Berg said. "You have to see where the child was and what they were doing. You need to see if they were exposed to anyone with similar symptoms." Berg said the child had not gone out of the St. Francis area. No source for the child's infection has been identified. If a child that was exposed does develop symptoms that appear to be mumps, parents are advised to keep the child isolated, contact their physician and report the possibility to the Health Department and work with them. The key is to get the child checked without exposing a large number of people to the possible illness, Berg said.
 

ttp://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/459695_4

Pediatrics, August 2003 Journal Scan
From The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal
July 2003 (Volume 22, Number 7)
Increase in Deaths From Pertussis Among Young Infants in the United States in
the 1990sVitek CR, Pascual FB, Baughman AL, Murphy TV
The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. 2003;22(7):628-634


They also noted that the current vaccination strategy does not protect the patients at highest risk for death, young infants.

Reviewer comment: I included this article in part as a reminder for all of us to aggressively screen infants for needed immunizations and administer deficient immunizations as soon as identified. The investigator's comment about finding new strategies to protect the very young demonstrates the best new information this article provides. Additionally, they suggest protecting adults around infants as a possible method of protection. I also recently heard a speaker discuss the possibility of "boosting" women of child-bearing age or even pregnant women as another potential strategy. Whatever the ultimate strategy, it almost certainly will involve efforts to reduce pertussis among the older child and adult populations, presumably the reservoirs from which these younger  children are exposed.
 

“Last year we saw three cases among vaccinated children in the south west London area."

Sort of proves the point, doesn't it...?

Sue

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/matters/currentaffairshealth/display.var.
410495.0.children_targeted_for_meningitis_booster_jabs.php

Children targeted for meningitis booster jabs

Young children across Wandsworth are to be encouraged to have a meningitis immunisation jab in a new drive by South West London Health Protection Unit. Children aged between six months and four years are being offered the Hib booster vaccine in their GP practices after recent figures show that the number of cases of meningitis has begun to rise.

The haemophilus influenza, or Hib, vaccine was first introduced in 1992, and doctors believe it is a vital tool in maintaining low instances of the disease recurring. Clinical director of South West London Health Protection Dr Barry Walsh said: “Hib meningitis is a serious condition. “Last year we saw three cases among vaccinated children in the south west London area.

“In order to prevent further cases we are urging parents to have their children boosted with the fourth dose of vaccine, which is safe and effective.” Parents of children within the age range are urged to contact their GP if they haven’t already been contacted to arrange an appointment. To find out more about the Hib vaccine contact the NHS Direct helpline on 0845 46 47.

 

http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2003/08/08/professional/links/20030808c
lin010.html

Meningococcal C vaccine may cause relapse of nephrotic syndrome in children

Last Updated: 2003-08-08 12:33:14 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Administration of meningococcal C conjugate vaccine (MCCV) appears to increase the risk of nephrotic syndrome relapse in children, according to a research letter in the August 9th issue of The Lancet. "The risk of relapse after vaccination might be greater for this group of patients than the risk of meningococcal C infection," Dr. Richard S. Trompeter and colleagues write, "so the decision to vaccinate should be carefully considered."

Immunogenic stimuli have been associated with the syndrome, but the effect of vaccination has not been investigated, the British researchers note. Their suspicions were raised when nine children with nephrotic syndrome relapsed after receiving MCCV.

Dr. Trompeter, of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital NHS Trust in London, and colleagues investigated the relapse rate during the year before and the year after vaccination of children with steroid-sensitive nephrotic syndrome.

Included were 106 patients who received the vaccine, among whom there were 63 relapses in the year before and 96 in the year postvaccination, a relative incidence of 1.52 (p = 0.009). The risk was markedly raised only in the first 6 months after inoculation (relative incidence = 1.84). "From 106 doses of vaccine, there was a risk of one relapse in every four doses given to this population," Dr. Trompeter and colleagues write. They suggest that conjugate vaccines stimulate T cells, "so disturbance of the cytokines by MCCV might have resulted in the cluster of relapses we recorded."

Lancet 2003;361:449-450.

Lancet 2003;
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51637-2003Sep9?language=printer

washingtonpost.com
Marines' Malaria Cases Show Protections Failed

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 10, 2003; Page A01

Despite extensive preventive measures, most of the more than 200 Marines who spent time ashore in Liberia last month apparently contracted malaria, with about 43 of them ill enough to be hospitalized. The malaria outbreak amounts to a stunning failure of standard protections against a disease that the American military is unusually keen to prevent in troops deployed to the tropics. So many Marines became sick in such a short period of time that Navy physicians for a while doubted the illnesses could all be due to the mosquito-borne infection.

Although the malaria diagnosis has been confirmed in only 15 percent of the troops, they and their officers report that nearly all who spent the two weeks ashore reported at least mild symptoms typical of malaria. Navy physicians and epidemiologists investigating the outbreak believe most of
the onshore troops may have been infected.

"We are extremely, extremely concerned about this," said Capt. Gregory J.Martin, a physician at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, where all but two patients are being treated. The concern is shared not only by the military's infectious diseases and preventive medicine specialists but by combat commanders, he said.

The outbreak occurred even though the troops were taking a drug to prevent the disease, were instructed to use insect repellents and were wearing uniforms treated with long-acting insecticides. How the Marines became infected despite these measures is uncertain, although failure of the drug to reach adequate concentrations in the troops' bloodstreams is a leading hypothesis.

The patients, members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit except for several Navy medical corpsmen, were taking mefloquine (sold as Lariam), a standard drug used to prevent and treat malaria. West Africa is not known to be an area with high rates of mefloquine-resistant disease, although occasional cases have been reported there. U.S. troops in West Africa have since switched to an alternative medication, doxycycline.

This is the most intensive outbreak of malaria in the U.S. armed services in recent memory and the largest number of cases among Marines since the deployment to Somalia a decade ago. All of the cases were caused by Plasmodium falciparum, one of three types of malaria parasite and by far the most dangerous. The number of malaria cases in the armed services in recent years was not available yesterday. The Army, which has the most, reported 57 cases last year, 52 in 2001 and 55 in 2000.

Thirty-one patients arrived at the Bethesda hospital Sunday and 10 yesterday morning. Two others are being treated at the Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. No one has died in the outbreak, but two patients in the Bethesda intensive care unit have cerebral malaria, the most feared form of the disease, with a fatality rate of about 20 percent. They are conscious, improving and expected to recover fully, said Lt. Cmdr. David L. Blazes, an infectious-diseases physician treating them.

Members of the Marine unit, normally stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C., went ashore Aug. 12-14 and returned to their two ships 10 to 12 days later. Soon afterward, many reported common symptoms of malaria, including headache, pain behind the eyes and muscle aches accompanied by cyclical fevers.

Malaria is normally diagnosed by using a microscope to look for malaria parasites inside red blood cells. Many of the Marines were diagnosed aboard ship that way. In some of the 43 people -- 40 Marines and three sailors --no parasites were seen, probably because the infection was partially treated by the mefloquine, but "virtually everyone had classical symptoms" of the disease, Blazes said.

About 30 patients who arrived at Bethesda on Sunday were put in a separate unit because physicians feared some might have some other disease; malaria rarely shows up in sudden, severe outbreaks. The possibilities included Lassa fever, which is caused by a virus; leptospirosis, caused by a bacterium; or infections arising from bacteria-like microbes called rickettsia.

"It was hard to believe that you could have almost all of a group that large develop symptoms over a four- to five-day period and have it be malaria," Martin said. Blood samples were sent to the Army's infectious diseases laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, and within 12 hours those infections were ruled out.

Nearly all the Marines said they had taken their once-a-week mefloquine pills; a few said they had missed a dose or two. Many had been taking it since June.  Normally, a case of malaria is considered severe if more than 3 percent of red blood cells are infected with the parasite. Several of the Marines, including one who reported never missing a dose of mefloquine, had more than 10 percent of their cells infected.

Peter B. Bloland, a malaria epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there are only a few possible explanations for the outbreak.  "The possibilities include inadequate absorption [of the drug into the bloodstream], people not taking it correctly, poor drug quality or actual resistance" to the drug in the microbes, he said. The experience of Peace Corps volunteers in West Africa, who live in areas of intense malaria transmission for long periods of time, suggests that mefloquine-resistant infections are rare there, he added.

"Based on what we know about failures of prophylaxis in Africa, I think the most common explanation is inadequate blood levels [of the preventive drug] for some reason," he said. About 120 samples of blood taken from the Marines shortly before they became ill will be sent to CDC to measure mefloquine levels.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

 

This article below indicates some top anthrax researchers found they need to revise their ideas on how anthrax works.  Wonder if this has any implications for how the vaccine supposedly works?  I remember from other material (GAO reports) that there was already a lack of certainty on how the shot provides "protection."  And there are certainly arguments that the titer count does not equate to protection.  Maybe if the researchers are going back to square one, so should the vaccine.  This article would seem to lend credence to efforts being pursued to develop a new shot.

http://www.advanceformlp.com/common/editorial/PrintFriendly.aspx?CC=21648

Issue Date:  9/8/2003 

Mouse Study Gives New View of Anthrax Toxin

A large-scale study of anthrax in mice has yielded new information about immune system response to anthrax bacteria, according to scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The discovery that toxins released by the bacteria do not behave as previously believed should redirect approaches to anthrax drug design, notes NIAID Senior Investigator Stephen Leppla, PhD, whose research is published in today's issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

In the new study, Dr. Leppla and his colleagues injected hundreds of inbred mice with anthrax lethal toxin (LT), and then took precisely timed measurements to determine how various organs and immune system processes responded. For example, they measured levels of chemicals called cytokines, which are released by immune system cells after a bacterial invasion. Dr. Leppla and his colleagues found no evidence of a persistent increase in cytokines, or of a link between cytokine increase and anthrax LT effects, contradicting earlier beliefs. The evidence suggests that current efforts to design cytokine-suppressing drugs to treat lethal toxin-mediated events in late stages of anthrax may be misguided.

"Finding effective therapies for diseases such as inhalational anthrax depends on our ability to connect basic research with clinicians' needs. This research is a perfect example of such translational research," said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, MD.

In a natural infection, inhalational anthrax begins after anthrax bacteria spores enter the body, germinate and release toxins. Scientists can create artificial infection by injecting animals with anthrax LT. The accumulation of toxins precipitates events that lead to death. For more than a decade, scientists based their understanding of LT actions on the results of a few studies that employed a limited number of mice. Because of the high cost of doing anthrax toxin research and the small number of anthrax researchers, theories about LT action went largely unquestioned.

"We still do not know how LT brings about the hypoxia and shock-like death we see in mice," said the paper's first author, Mahtab Moayeri, PhD. The next important step, she adds, will be to identify the cell targets of LT and determine precisely how it initiates the chain of events leading to death.

Copyright ©2003 Merion Publications
2900 Horizon Drive, King of Prussia, PA 19406 • 800-355-5627
Publishers of ADVANCE Newsmagazines
www.advanceweb.com
 

KERRY'S FIGHT FOR LIFE AFTER TB JAB AT SCHOOL
  Date: 9/28/2003; Publication: Sunday Mirror; Author: HELEN MORGAN

  No URL:
  A TEENAGER has spent five months in hospital and still has to be fed through a tube after a routine TB jab given to her at school.  Kerry Watson, 15, had the BCG vaccine, which protects against tuberculosis,  while she was suffering from a bug.  Just days after the injection, which was also given to hundreds of her school-mates, she started having attacks of vomiting and was taken to the Royal Infirmary, Aberdeen. Doctors dismissed her condition as a stomach bug and she was sent home.  But her body continued to reject food and after a few days she was too weak to stand so she was re-admitted to hospital and hooked to a feeding tube.
 
  Eventually, her weight fell to just six stone.   Kerry was released from hospital in July, but she still cannot eat solid food and is being fed through a tube in her nose. It could take more than a year for her stomach to heal properly. Doctors think an allergic reaction to the jab, plus the bug, led to her  illness.  Her mother Karen, a 37-year-old careworker, said: "It was a terrible time for us all. The doctors had no idea what was wrong with Kerry. "We were all sick with worry and scared for her. She couldn't eat anything.  It was heartbreaking to see her like that, because she is normally so fit   and healthy and raring to go." Kerry was given the BCG injection at Portlethen Academy, Aberdeen, in February. Kerry's dad, 41-year-old garage owner Alan, said: "There were a few times when we thought we were going to lose Kerry. It was horrible. At one point they were on the verge of sending her to intensive care.  "It has helped us to grow closer as a family. We realise what we could have lost and how lucky we are."  Kelly longed to get out of her hospital bed and get back to her passion -  dancing.

  But as soon as she was taken off the feeding tubes she was ill again.   Her parents are angry. Mr Watson said: "This has ruined her life. She is not the same girl any more.  "She dances seven days a week and practises all the time, but it's not as easy as it was before. It's just not fair."   Kerry is now back at school - and dancing again. She won 10 trophies at a  recent contest in Aberdeen.   A spokeswoman from NHS Grampian said: "We can't comment on individual cases but would state that the BCG is a very safe vaccination."
  HELEN MORGAN, KERRY'S FIGHT FOR LIFE AFTER TB JAB AT SCHOOL. , Sunday Mirror, 09-28-2003, pp 35.

 

http://www.wfsb.com/Global/story.asp?S=1025686

COLCHESTER -- State health experts are investigating an outbreak of chicken pox in Colchester.
65 students at the Jack Jackter Elementary School got chicken pox last year. It was one of the largest outbreaks in the state.  The Centers for Disease Control is also involved in the investigation. That's because some of the students who got sick were vaccinated against chicken pox. The chicken pox vaccine has a 20-percent failure rate.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/12/national/12BRFS6.html?tntemail1
December 12, 2002
National Briefing: Washington
New York Times

STUDY OF CHICKEN POX VACCINE
A chicken pox outbreak two years ago found vaccinations surprisingly ineffective and may suggest that children should get two shots instead of one, some researchers say.
 

http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/health_and_fitness/article/0,1406,KNS_310_2395537,00.html

Whooping cough not shot down, but vaccinations up

By JANE E. ALLEN, Los Angeles Times

November 3, 2003

Doctors and public health officials are stumped. Even though vaccination rates are at record highs for whooping cough, cases of the highly contagious respiratory illness have been on the rise nationwide for more than two decades. In recent weeks, outbreaks have taken hold in parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Illinois. Nationally, cases reached 9,771 last year, the most since 1964. 
           
The disease can be deadly, especially in babies, with 22 deaths nationwide last year. Whooping cough, or pertussis, takes its name from the sound that infected infants make as they struggle to inhale. It's caused by a rugged and wily bacterium, "Bordetella pertussis," that evades much of the body's disease-fighting system while wreaking havoc in the lungs, creating paroxysms of coughing powerful enough to break ribs. In adults, the illness typically is less severe, producing a cough that lasts weeks to months. Vaccination begun in the 1940s was considered to have vanquished the bacterium. It slashed rates from 150 reported cases per 100,000 Americans to less than 1 case per 100,000. But that rate has bounced back to 2.7 reported cases for every 100,000 Americans, although "there may be as many as 10 times as many cases," said Kris Bisgard, a medical epidemiologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The illness is likely to be missed in teenagers and adults, who account for 50 percent of reported cases, because few doctors are trained to think about pertussis in anyone but babies. Although a simple blood test could help ensure that cases are properly treated, such a test remains elusive. Nor is there a vaccine for people older than 7.

 

http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1617203

U.S. to Begin 1st Tuberculosis Vaccine Trial in 60 Years

A new vaccine -- made with several proteins from the bacterium that causes tuberculosis -- will soon begin initial testing in humans, U.S. health officials announced Monday.

"This candidate vaccine, as well as other novel products emerging from the TB research and development pipeline, offers hope for reducing the burden of a disease that claims approximately two million lives each year," said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The vaccine combines two tuberculosis proteins known to stimulate strong immune responses in humans. The proteins were initially identified by screening blood taken from volunteers who never became ill with tuberculosis despite long-term infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, health officials said.

The Phase I trial will include 20 volunteers at a single site in the United States and will assess the vaccine's safety. If the vaccine proves safe in this initial trial, it will be tested further in larger clinical trials. The trial will be conducted by Seattle biotechnology company Corixa and GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, a vaccine manufacturer based in Belgium, officials said.

The current TB vaccine, called BCG, offers some protection against the form of TB most often contracted by very young children. But the vaccine's effectiveness wears off over time. Also, BCG isn't very effective against pulmonary TB, the most contagious form of the disease, officials said.
 

http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol363/iss9408/full/llan.363.9408.correspondence.28727.1

MMR immunisation after contact with measles virus

Sir--A single case of measles occurred recently at a children's nursery in the UK. A 17-month-old boy who had not received the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine presented to the Accident and Emergency department in the morning with an erythematous maculopapular rash on his face and upper body. He had been unwell for 72 h with coryza, cough, conjunctivitis, and diarrhoea. Measles was laboratory-confirmed within 3 h by virus-specific immunofluorescence of a nasopharyngeal aspirate. However, since the history and rash were virtually pathognomonic of measles, the nursery was contacted as soon as a clinical diagnosis was made.

The child had been in close contact with six other children (ages 15-24 months) during the entire coryzal period. None of these children had received MMR despite all being eligible. Since current advice indicates that MMR given within 3 days of exposure might modify or abort an attack of measles,1-3 we advised the parents to have their children immunised immediately. The severity of the illness in the index case ensured that four of the six sets of parents had their children immunised with MMR the same day. Despite doing so, all six children developed prodromal symptoms of measles, on average 8 days after the onset of such symptoms in the index case. 2-3 days later, they all developed a typical measles rash.

Measles-specific IgM was detected in oral fluids from all six secondary cases and viral nucleic acid was detected by PCR in the index case and from two secondary cases (one of whom had been immunised after exposure). Sequencing showed all three isolates to be genotype D8, the strain circulating currently in south London, UK.

We have shown that, despite rapid diagnosis, measles transmission and clinical infection was not preventable by post-exposure immunisation. This finding contrasts with accepted guidance in this area. Only two studies have shown that live measles vaccine alone can prevent secondary cases after exposure: Watson2 was able to prevent infection in a single household when vaccine was given to family contacts one day after appearance of the rash and 96 h after onset of coryzal symptoms in the index case, and Ruuskanen and colleagues3 reported protection from vaccination in children vaccinated after exposure in a school setting. However, the first study was conducted with a very early vaccine that contained a high dose of a different measles virus strain (Edmonston). Subsequently, all monovalent measles and MMR vaccines used in the UK have contained lower doses of Schwartz or Moraten strains. The lack of efficacy we saw might have been due to delay in administration or to differences in the vaccine formulation. Alternatively, the interpretation of the original observations made on small numbers of cases might have been incorrect.

If parents continue to decline MMR immunisation, once measles is introduced into a home, nursery, school, or hospital ward, our observations suggest that administration of MMR vaccine as early as possible might not prevent infection in those children already exposed. The only reliable way to prevent measles is to maintain high MMR uptake rates in the community.

*Philip Rice, Yvonne Young, Bernard Cohen, Mary Ramsay

 

http://www.oregonlive.com/metro/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1078146023173
820.xml

Chickenpox flare in Lake Oswego indicates vaccine may wear off

Many of the children who got the illness had been inoculated, raising the question of whether booster shots will be needed

03/01/04

DON COLBURN

A new study of a 2001 chickenpox outbreak in a Lake Oswego elementary school suggests that a booster shot for the disease may be needed after five years. Health investigators were surprised to find an outbreak of chickenpox in a school in which 97 percent of students had already had the disease or had been vaccinated. The 21 chickenpox cases at Forest Hills Elementary included
18 students who had received shots. Most of them had been vaccinated more than five years earlier.

If larger studies bear out the Lake Oswego findings, "routine booster vaccination for children might be warranted," concluded a team of researchers from Oregon and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings are reported today in the medical journal Pediatrics.

The study does not show that the chickenpox vaccine is ineffective, said Dr. Paul Cieslak, a communicable disease specialist with the Oregon Department of Human Services and co-author of the study. "You're still better off with the vaccine," Cieslak said. Inoculated children rarely get chickenpox, and if they do, their cases are milder. In the Lake Oswego school outbreak, 43 percent of the small number of unvaccinated children came down with chickenpox, compared with 12 percent of those who had received shots.

But researchers were surprised by the difference in risk between kids recently vaccinated and those vaccinated years earlier. A separate study at Yale Medical School, reported last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found a slight loss of immunity -- from 97 percent to 84 percent -- after one year.

In the Oregon study, the big jump in cases among vaccinated children came after five years. Nearly one in four students exposed to chickenpox more than five years after immunization got the disease.

For public health officials, "outbreaks are natural experiments," Cieslak said. Because it is ethically taboo to expose children intentionally to disease, "our approach is that when an outbreak happens, let's learn something from it."

The Lake Oswego elementary school provided "a perfect place to study how well the vaccine works," he said. Of the 218 students who had not gained immunity by having the disease, all but seven had been vaccinated.

The culprit: rare cases

"So we're thinking: How come there's chickenpox there?" Cieslak said.

The culprit: a small number of what disease-trackers call "breakthrough cases" -- rare cases that allow an outbreak to occur even among a heavily inoculated population.

"No vaccine is 100 percent effective," cautioned Peggy Lou Hillman, immunization coordinator for Multnomah County.

But before health officials add a chickenpox booster to the immunization schedule, she said, researchers must make sure the breakthrough cases result from dwindling immunity over time. Other factors, such as improper storage or exposure to heat, also can impair the vaccine's effectiveness.

A total of 422 students in 16 classrooms attended the Lake Oswego school in 2001. They were fairly evenly divided between those who had already had chickenpox and those who hadn't. Most who hadn't had the disease had gotten the shots. Only seven students appeared susceptible to the disease because they had had neither the shots nor the disease. Nevertheless, 21 cases
occurred among students in nine classrooms.

The findings suggest but do not prove that the immunity conferred by the vaccine wanes over time, Cieslak said. That would not be surprising, but the magnitude of the difference was striking, he said. The numbers in the Oregon study are small, and they do not justify calling for a chickenpox booster shot until they are corroborated by research in larger, more diverse populations, Cieslak said. The study was based on health records from the school, a questionnaire and phone calls to the parents of each child involved in the outbreak.

Developed in 1970s

The chickenpox vaccine, developed in Japan during the 1970s, uses a live virus that is weakened. It is potent enough to trigger a protective reaction by the body's immune system but not strong enough to cause illness.

The vaccine was approved in the United States in 1995, and Oregon schools began to phase in a required shot in 2000 for children who had not had the disease.

Chickenpox is not a reportable disease -- meaning doctors are not required to report cases to local or state health departments, The reason is that before the vaccine became available, virtually every child got chickenpox. Reporting is limited to rarer and more dangerous infections, such as
tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and salmonella.

Tracking chickenpox cases, Cieslak said, would have been "like battling an ocean."

Don Colburn: 503-294-5124; doncolburn@news.oregonian.com

 

http://www.medicalposting.ca/children/article.jsp?content=20040311_082809_63
68&topStory=y
     
    
  2004-03-11  
  Vaccine-in-a-patch linked to diabetes and multiple sclerosis 
     
  Ingredients called accelerants trigger immune system diseases in mice    
   
  Adhesive patches -- proposed as an easy way to vaccinate children -- may increase the risk of developing diabetes and multiple sclerosis, Australian researchers suggest.  The method is being tested in the United States, where its developers contend seven in 10 immunizations will be done this way within five years because the method offers lower cost, less pain and greater hygiene.

But research by Alan Baxter at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and Tony Basten of the University of Sydney raises doubts about the safety of the technique. The patches contain components of either a virus or bacteria, as do existing vaccines. But they also use accelerants that increase the body's response to the vaccine.

"We've found that the accelerant also accelerates other ongoing tissue damage which may be occurring in the person," Baxter says. Their research showed that multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes appeared at an earlier stage in mice treated with the accelerant than in other mice.  In type 1 diabetes, the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin. In multiple sclerosis, it attacks the myelin sheath covering nerves in the brain and spinal cord.

"We found that the way this accelerant increases a person's immune response to the vaccine appears to be exactly the same as the mechanism by which it increases the reaction to your own tissue, and this effect cannot be separated." Baxter says the findings mean patch vaccines will need to be tested much more extensively than planned.
 

PERSONAL HEALTH
Even With Vaccination, the 'Whoop' Is Back
By JANE E. BRODY
Published: March 2, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/health/02BROD.html

Get used to it. Pertussis,  whooping cough, is here to stay. . "Pertussis is the only vaccine-preventable disease that is still increasing in this country.

Testimony by Jerri Johnson
Health and Human Services Policy Committee 
January 27, 2003 
Childcare providers enforce immunization requirements, state licensers of childcare providers, and the public schools. This enforcement costs money for staff to do record keeping and follow-up. Much of this cost is borne by the state. A study in 1998 estimated that enforcing the immunization
requirements cost the state at that time around $5 million per year.

Will adding new vaccines to the list increase costs to schools? It will, because many more follow-up contacts will be needed for these particular vaccines.   Currently, 35 percent of parents are not vaccinating their children for chickenpox. Minneapolis Public Schools estimated that each parent follow-up contact cost $18 in staff time. 

Minneapolis Public Schools wrote to the Department of Health asking that no immunization requirements be added until funding is in place to enforce them. In addition to the state costs of enforcing vaccine requirements, these vaccines cost money in health care dollars.   I have included a handout in your package with medical cost analyses of pneumococcal and chickenpox vaccines. Chickenpox and pneumococcal vaccine programs actually cost more money than they save from preventing disease. The pneumococcal vaccine, for example, costs around $60 per dose, or $240 per child for the four-dose series. The chickenpox vaccine also does not recover costs when looking at the cost of the vaccine compared to the cost of the disease. Only by factoring in indirect costs, such as lost wages for a parent to stay home with a child sick with chickenpox, is this vaccine deemed to be cost-effective. 

But these assessments of indirect costs did not include the cost of caring for vaccine-injured children. Hospitalization and medical costs for these children are extremely high. During school years, they require special education services, costs borne by the state. These children may later be
cared for in group homes the rest of their lives, incurring huge costs to the state. Twelve percent of our children now have chronic disease of some sort, and many medical experts believe that the rapid increase in diseases such as autism, ADD, juvenile diabetes and asthma is partially attributable
to the increase in required vaccines. 

A parent who stays home for five days when her child has chickenpox may use vacation days or may lose some income. But parents of children disabled by vaccines often must quit work permanently to stay home with their child, losing years of income, and the vaccine-injured child may never grow up to
earn a productive income. 

But ultimately, the question before us is not about dollars and cents. When we are preventing communicable disease, and when we are preventing vaccine injuries, the real issue is the value in human life that can't be quantified. You can't put a price on the joy of having a healthy baby, and you can't quantify the grief of a parent who loses a baby, no matter what the cause. 

And so the Minnesota Natural Health Coalition is calling for the following: 

1. Safer vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies need to be held accountable to produce vaccines that have fewer serious side effects. 
 
2. The State of Minnesota should not require new vaccines if we do not know whether they are safe for our children. In the case of the pneumococcal vaccine, during the pre-licensure study where 17,000 healthy infants with no acute or underlying chronic disease were given Prevnar, 162 infants required emergency room care, 24 were hospitalized within 72 hours of receiving the vaccine and eight infants who had never had seizures before had seizures within 72 hours. Forty infants who had never had asthma before required doctor's care for asthma, wheezing, shortness of breath or breath-holding within 72 hours of the vaccine.

One previously healthy child developed congestive heart failure within 72 hours of the vaccine and three children developed hypotonic/hyporesponsive episodes. Were these serious situations caused by the vaccine? There is no way to determine this without following the time-honored scientific process of comparing the test group with a control group that did not receive a vaccine. This was not done. One variable, the test vaccine, was compared with another variable, another experimental vaccine. 

Yet the physicians who conducted the study concluded at the end, this test "did not reveal any severe adverse events related to vaccination that resulted in hospitalization, emergency room visits or clinic visits." The Vaccine Information Sheet on Prevnar given to parents at their clinics says, "So far, no serious reactions have been associated with this vaccine." Given the structure of the clinical study, it is not scientifically possible to say that these reactions were caused by the vaccine, nor is it possible to say that they were not. 

3. If it is inherently impossible to produce a vaccine without a significant risk of serious adverse effects or death, then we need to be clear about that. If the pneumococcal vaccine effectively reduces pneumococcal disease, but at the price of death or disability to a few babies, we need to know those numbers. Our research needs to be science-based, with control groups, and parents need to know the risks so they can make an informed decision. 

We are having a good debate in this country on the smallpox vaccine. This could be a great model for our infant vaccination programs. Public health officials are doing a good job of articulating the risks of smallpox and the risks of the vaccine. One or two deaths per million from the vaccine is being taken very seriously. Adults are weighing the risks and benefits. We should afford the same courtesy to infants and their parents in the routine vaccine program. 

4. Parents should be educated that if their child is ill, vaccination should be postponed. They should be told that if their child suffered a seizure or bad reaction to a previous vaccine, she is at risk for an even greater reaction to the next one. If parents have a family history of a severe vaccine reaction, they should know that their child might be at risk.

The CDC already has guidelines on this, and they are printed on the sheets given to parents when the child receives a vaccine. If parents knew this before making their appointments with the doctor, perhaps many vaccine injuries could be avoided. Again, the smallpox discussion is a good model on this--people are being informed that if you have eczema, you are at risk from the vaccine; if you are on corticosteroids you are at risk. Similarly, parents of infants could be advised on this at an early date. 

5. If new vaccines being produced cannot be safer, then perhaps we need to rethink the model that vaccinates the entire population for a disease. This model was developed in response to overwhelming epidemics like polio. However, in the case of invasive pneumococcal disease, which affects only 0.2 percent of Minnesota children, this may not be an appropriate model. 

6. Finally, parents who believe that their child was harmed or killed by a vaccine need to be heard and taken seriously. They should not be brushed off by being told it was not related to the vaccine. Their experience should be studied for clues to how we can have safer vaccine programs.

 

http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=4740126
  
 Stress May Weaken Flu Shot Protection
  Fri Apr 2, 2004 02:37 PM ET
    
   By Merritt McKinney

If the vaccine doesn't work blame stress.
 

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2004/4/9/nation/7728525&sec=nation
The Star, Malaysia
April 9, 2004

CAP: Mass measles vaccination may not be wise move

KUALA LUMPUR: The Consumers Association of Penang has urged the Health Ministry to conduct a proper evaluation before carrying out mass measles vaccination to immunise 4.5 million children nationwide. CAP president S.M. Mohd Idris claimed in a statement that the ministry had made the decision based merely on the fact that it expected an outbreak of the disease in 2005 or 2006.

He was commenting on a recent ministry announcement that it aimed to immunise children aged between seven and 15 against measles through its National Measles Immunisation Campaign. The immunisation programme will be carried out in schools by a health team. Mohd Idris said the plan was to use a combination vaccine against three diseases, namely mumps, measles and rubella (German measles), or what is better known as MMR vaccine. He said that studies overseas had shown that measles continued to occur even in children who had been fully vaccinated.

Previously, he said, those who contacted measles were usually below the age of 10, but now, following years of vaccinations, more adults were being infected. He also pointed out that soon after the measles vaccine was in use, a new problem arose where children were contracting a condition known as atypical measles, a more serious form of measles that may not respond to treatment. "Many children already receive a dose of MMR vaccine when they are around one year old, with a booster a few years later. "The health authorities have informed one parent that, although her child
has received her booster jab the year before, the vaccination under this programme is still necessary.

"Is there any guarantee that there will be no adverse effects on the child following these repeated jabs?" Mohd Idris called on the Health Ministry to put the measles immunisation plan on hold pending a proper review, as "there is much evidence against the need for mass vaccinations as much as there is for them." - Bernama
 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&
dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15121300

Vaccine. 2004 May 7;22(15-16):1892-8.   Related Articles,Links 

Efficacies of whole cell and acellular pertussis vaccines against Bordetella parapertussis in a mouse model.

David S, Van Furth R, Mooi FR.

Research Laboratory for Infectious Diseases, National Institute Of Public Health and the Environment, P.O. Box 1, 3720 Bilthoven, The Netherlands.

Pertussis vaccine development has mainly focused on Bordetella pertussis, and consequently these vaccines contain B. pertussis antigens only. However, the related species Bordetella parapertussis can also cause pertussis, although symptoms associated with the disease are generally considered to be milder.  Recent field studies have shown that in some outbreaks B. parapertussis can  prevail. Using a mouse model we compared the efficacy against B. parapertussis of two commercially available acellular vaccines and two whole cell vaccines, used in The Netherlands and Finland, respectively. The efficacies of the two whole cell vaccines against B. parapertussis were similar, but much lower compared to the efficacy against B. pertussis. Although, the acellular vaccines conferred some protection against B. parapertussis early in infection, the values were not significant. Later in infection, a highly significant enhancement of colonisation by B. parapertussis was observed in mice vaccinated with acellular vaccines. The whole cell vaccines protected significantly better than the acellular vaccines against B. parapertussis. The possible consequences of a switch from whole cell to acellular vaccines was discussed in the light of our findings.

PMID: 15121300 [PubMed]    

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&
dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15155223

Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2004 Jun;48(6):2206-13.    Related Articles,
Links   
 
Short- and long-term effects of pneumococcal conjugate vaccination of
children on penicillin resistance.

Temime L, Guillemot D, Boelle PY.

INSERM U444-27, rue Chaligny, 75571 Paris Cedex 12, France. laura.tem
ime@sat.ap-hop-paris.fr

Recent observations have shown that wide-scale vaccination with pneumococcal conjugate vaccines was associated with a reduction in invasive disease, supporting the expectation that vaccination could help reduce carriage of Streptococcus pneumoniae and control the spread of resistant strains. However, it is too early to assess whether these effects can be sustained in the long term. Here, we used mathematical modeling to investigate time changes in pneumococcal colonization and resistance induced by conjugate vaccination in an environment where antibiotic exposure is high and resistance is widespread. According to model predictions, vaccination induced a decrease in carriage of vaccine-type pneumococci to very low levels, typically in 10 to 15 years under epidemiologically realistic conditions. Almost simultaneously, non-vaccine-type pneumococci spread in the community. Consequently, while there was a short-term decrease in the overall carriage rate, it was followed after a few years by a renewed, although limited, increase. Vaccination with a heptavalent vaccine did not affect the extent to which antibiotic resistance was selected: in all cases, the distribution of resistance levels peaked at high levels (MIC > 2 microg/ml) after 20 years. With a vaccine optimally designed to include all serotypes currently exhibiting decreased susceptibility to penicillin G, the selection of resistance was slowed down, although not prevented. These results suggest that because of serotype replacement, the effects of vaccination observed today may not be sustained in the long term. As a consequence, vaccination alone may not be successful in controlling selection for resistance in S. pneumoniae.

PMID: 15155223 [PubMed - in process]   
 

[When a religion (eg, Vaccines are miraculously wonderful) interferes with scientific findings (eg, research showing the vaccines can bias immunity in unnatural ways, even prompt lingering infections), then the scientific findings should be ignored so that vaccine orthodoxy is preserved. -Teresa Binstock]

Vaccine failure puzzles biologists
By The Associated Press - 5/31/04

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2004/05/31/montana/a06053104_04.txt


JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — Biologists are puzzled why brucellosis exposure rates  have spiked among some vaccinated elk. Disease rates at the Greys River elk feedground have even exceeded the high rates of the 1970s, before the state began vaccinating elk against brucellosis, according to Brandon Scurlock, a biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

To be honest, I have no way of explaining this,'' Scurlock told a recent  forum in Pinedale on elk feedgrounds. Controlling the disease, which can cause animals to abort, is important because it can be transmitted to cattle. The detection of the disease in cattle caused Wyoming to lose its federal brucellosis-free status earlier this year. That in turn has led to laborious and costly testing requirements.

While feedgrounds help keep elk away from cattle by encouraging them to congregate, the same congregation helps spread disease. About 25 percent of elk on all feedgrounds test positive for exposure to the disease ; compared to less than 3 percent of other elk. Vaccination at the Greys River feedground began in 1985. Brucellosis exposure dropped below 10 percent in the mid-1990s, down from 54 percent in the 1970s. In 2000, however, rates jumped to 26 percent before hitting 54 percent the following year. This year, 59 percent of elk tested positive.

Biologists originally thought that a weak batch of vaccine given to some elk in 1998 was to blame for the brucellosis rates at the Greys River feedground. But Scurlock said that theory is no longer plausible because disease rates should have dropped among the elk that have been vaccinated with the correct dosage since then.

He said more tests are needed to find out what is happening.

[Of course, if "more tests" generate data that is too damning of the
vaccinations, then the Elk version of the IOM will decree, No More Study!]

 

http://www.nature.com/nsu/040621/040621-3.html

Vaccines may increase virulence
Pursue additional defences, urge malaria experts.

22 June 2004
HELEN PEARSON

Vaccines against malaria could cause the parasite to develop more vicious strains. But experts warn that the finding should not detract from the urgent hunt for a jab.

Malaria is caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which is injected into humans by mosquitoes. Over a dozen clinical trials are in progress for possible vaccines against the deadly disease. Most of these jabs create conditions in which, although the parasites can still infect people, the immune system slows their multiplication so they do not cause disease.

To investigate whether surviving parasites change with time, Margaret Mackinnon and Andrew Read at the University of Edinburgh, UK, infected a mouse with a type of Plasmodium and then passed blood carrying the parasite on to another animal seven days later. They repeated this process 20 times, to mimic the ailment passing from person to person.

Parasites that moved from one vaccinated animal to another evolved into nastier strains than those grown in non-vaccinated animals, the researchers show in PLoS Biology1. The vaccinated animals stayed healthy, but when the parasite they carried was transferred into other mice, it killed more red
blood cells and made them lose more weight than the original malaria strain. Mackinnon and Read believe that malaria vaccines could have the same effect in people. Perhaps over decades, P. falciparum might evolve into a more deadly form in vaccinated people, which would pose a greater threat than ever to those unprotected by a jab.

No magic bullet

Malaria vaccines are still vital, stresses Read, because people who are immunized will be protected from the disease. But he urges public health officials to pursue other methods to eliminate malaria, such as distributing nets and developing new drugs, even as jabs are developed. "You shouldn't think of vaccines as a magic bullet," he says.

Researchers might also avoid types of vaccine that allow the parasite to survive at low levels, he suggests. Instead, they could focus on classes of vaccine that hobble the parasite before it infects red blood cells or which cripple it in the mosquito and so stop it passing from one person to another.
Many of the vaccines under trial already take the latter approach. In fact experts predict that an effective malaria vaccine will probably trigger the immune system into attacking the parasite at several different stages of its life cycle.

But some experts are concerned that the new finding will undermine their efforts to stem a disease that kills 2 million to 3 million people each year. "It has no relevance to vaccine development," says Adrian Hill who is working on malaria jabs at the University of Oxford, UK.

Read disagrees: "The big question is, would the same thing happen with another virus?" If so, jabs against other diseases, such as measles, might also have promoted the emergence of more virulent strains. It is hard to tell whether this has happened, because improved medical practices make it difficult to compare death rates at a time before vaccination with those today.


References
Mackinnon, M .J. & Read, A. F. . PloS Biology, published online, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020230 (2004).|Article|

 

Search for AIDS vaccine falters

Tue Jul 13, 6:45 AM ET  Add Top Stories - USATODAY.com to My Yahoo!

By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY

The two-decade search for an AIDS (news - web sites) vaccine, the only way to end the global crisis, is all but starting over, researchers here said Monday.  The only vaccine to complete two large-scale clinical trials, AIDSVAX, proved a flop.  A major Thai trial now enrolling patients and using a two-vaccine approach has drawn criticism for including the failed vaccine.  Most of the 30 vaccine candidates now in the pipeline are relatively untested, and they're so similar that if one fails, they all may fail.

If that isn't discouraging enough, the next wave of large-scale human trials will be especially challenging because countries with the biggest epidemics lack the resources needed to study thousands of patients. "This is a global disgrace," says Seth Berkley, director of the non-profit International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. "There hasn't been a serious effort, and until there is a serious effort, we'll never get there." Four years ago, the initiative called for tripling annual research money to $1.1 billion. Funding now totals $650 million; $100 million comes from drug companies, which is 1% of what the companies spend on health product development, says Scientific Blueprint 2004, the initiative's report released Monday.

A separate report by the Joint United Nations (news - web sites) Programme on HIV (news - web sites)/AIDS, UNAIDS (news - web sites), shows that there were more than 13,000 new HIV infections a day last year, almost all in low- and middle-income countries.

The search for an AIDS vaccine has long been overshadowed by the search for new AIDS drugs, which are far more profitable because patients must take them for life. But that cost already is beyond the means of most poor countries. Considering there are roughly 5 million new infections a year, "we won't be able to be keep pace with the demand for treatment," Helene Gayle of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation told the 15th International AIDS Conference here.

Gayle is a co-chair of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, a consortium of research agencies launched by the Gates Foundation last year to jump-start vaccine research. In June, G-8 nations endorsed the strategy, and the USA promised $15 million.

Two major trials of vaccine candidates are still in the works. The first pairs AIDSVAX with a dose of Alvac, a vaccine made by Aventis Pasteur. Now getting started in Thailand, it will involve about 16,000 people. But critics say the trial is a waste of time because AIDSVAX has been proven not to work. John McNeill of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (news - web sites) says researchers believe the two vaccines might work better together than by themselves.

 

[Like usual, they don't have any idea what vaccines REALLY do to the body. Brain shrinkage and atrophy may explain some decisions by CDC and ACIP on vaccine policy.  On the plus side, at least they are just giving this to people already with the disease and not trying to develop one for all babies ..yet.]

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/9214343.htm?1c Alzheimer's vaccine made brains shrink

Posted on Thu, Jul. 22, 2004
By John Fauber
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

PHILADELPHIA - The brains of some of the people who received an experimental vaccine against Alzheimer's disease have shrunk.

Virology. 2004 Aug 15;326(1):20-8.

The nonresponse to hepatitis B vaccination is associated with impaired lymphocyte activation.

Goncalves L, Albarran B, Salmen S, Borges L, Fields H, Montes H, Soyano A, Diaz Y, Berrueta L.

Institute of Clinical Immunology, University of Los Andes, Merida,Venezuela.

Nonresponsiveness against hepatitis B vaccination has been described in 4-10% of immunized subjects. We have explored the specific cell response to hepatitis B surface antigen by analyzing: PBMC proliferation, cytokine production (Th1, Th2 profiles, and TGF-beta), and activation molecules on Th cells. A poor proliferative response was demonstrated in nonresponders (P < 0.05). T cells from responders produced all tested cytokines (P < 0.01), in contrast with nonresponders subjects (P < 0.05). Expression of CD69 and CD25 was diminished in T cells from nonresponders (P < 0.01). A reduced expression of CD40L was also detected in T cells from nonresponders (P < 0.01). An elevated correlation coefficient was observed between CD40L on CD4+ cells and antibody production. These results suggest an overall inability of T cells to be activated which could be consistent with potential differences in antigen presentation. In conclusion, our results suggest that an altered Th response may be a consequence of inappropriate early activation events.

PMID: 15262491 [PubMed - in process]
 

Clin Infect Dis. 2004 Dec 1;39(11):1715-8. Epub 2004 Dec 1. Related Articles, Links

Prevalence of antibody to Bordetella pertussis antigens in serum specimens obtained from 1793 adolescents and adults.

Cherry JD, Chang SJ, Klein D, Lee M, Barenkamp S, Bernstein D, Edelman R, Decker MD, Greenberg DP, Keitel W, Treanor J, Ward JI.

University of CaliforniaLos Angeles Center for Vaccine Research, Research and Education Institute, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Torrance, USA. jcherry@mednet.ucla.edu <jcherry@mednet.ucla.edu>

Serum specimens were obtained from all subjects in the adolescent and adult acellular pertussis (aP) vaccine efficacy trial before and after immunization to study the prevalence of IgG and IgA antibody and geometric mean titers to 4 Bordetella pertussis antigens. Of 1793 adolescents and adult subjects who received aP vaccine, only 20%, 68%, 59%, and 39% had concentrations of IgG antibodies to pertussis toxin, filamentous hemagglutinin, pertactin, and fimbriae types 2 and 3, respectively, that were greater than or equal to the limit of quantitation of the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay used in the analysis. There was minimal variation in antibody prevalence with respect to geographic area, age, sex, or race.

PMID: 15578376 [PubMed - in process]
 

Chicken-Pox vaccine not totally effective

25 Dec 2004  <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/images/blanktab.gif>

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=18313
<http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=18313&#38;nfid=rssfe
eds> &#38;nfid=rssfeeds

For over five years, doctors in India have been recommending chicken pox vaccination for children, even though it does not figure in the list of mandatory vaccinations, and no comparative study has ever been conducted.  Now they may have to do a rethink, after new studies in the US have raised
doubts about its effectiveness. According to the study, published last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association, found the effectiveness of the vaccine is found to fade substantially a year after i