vaccines

[ae at dna.bio.warwick.ac.uk]

In article <39det5$ldd at mserv1.dl.ac.uk> "J.P. Hays" <jph5 at leicester.ac.uk> writes:

>2) Vaccines may not be the panacea that people hope for. I'm writing from
>memory, but I'm sure there was a Respiratory Syncytial Virus vaccine used in
>America which facilitated greater morbidity in vaccinated individuals
>that came into contact with RSV than in unvaccinated individuals
>that came into contact with RSV.


The trial that you refer to involved the use of an inactivated RS virus 
vaccine.  Following vaccination the children in the study were followed to 
monitor their response to natural infection.  On infection the level of 
morbididty was higher than would have been predicted statistically and there 
was at least one death.  Follow up study has not revealed the cause but it is 
possible that the problem arose from the single batch of vaccine used in that 
particular trial.  The use of alternative vaccine strategies for RS virus e.g. 
live attenuated viruses are still being actively pursued with some degree of 
hope.

Andrew Easton
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Warwick
Coventry
UK

E-mail ae at dna.bio.warwick.ac.uk