WASHINGTON – While planning to manufacture enough smallpox vaccine for every American, the government is hunting the medication necessary to treat severe, even life-threatening, side effects from the vaccine.
Smallpox vaccine is made from a live virus called vaccinia that itself can cause serious infections that result in large open sores all over the body. This vaccinia infection can be fatal, particularly in people with weak immune systems, such as organ transplant recipients and cancer patients, and those with the skin disease eczema.
Medication called vaccinia immune globulin, or VIG, can treat the side effect, and thus VIG would have to be on hand if anyone were inoculated with smallpox vaccine. It is obtained from the blood of people recently vaccinated, and routine smallpox inoculations ended in 1972, although military personnel and certain laboratory workers have been vaccinated more recently.
The nation's remaining stock of VIG is stored in a federal stockpile. The Food and Drug Administration has cast doubt on whether all of that VIG still is usable. A spokesman said Monday it could be used only as an experimental medication under strict scrutiny.
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