Texas Hospital to Test New Smallpox Vaccine

Research to Test Vaccine as Precaution Against Bioterrorist Attack

With the current state of affairs in the country and the world, the word bioterrorist has almost become a part of everyday language. The medical researchers are taking the threats seriously, every threat needs to be. The researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have begun testing a new vaccine with the thought of a bioterrorist attack in mind. The vaccine is for smallpox and it may have the tremendous benefit of causing less side effects than the vaccine that is currently in use. They set out on this research with one goal in mind and that is to produce a vaccine that will provide fast and safe protection from smallpox if there were to ever be a bioterrorist attack.

The existing vaccine is called Dryvax and it does its job very well. As a matter of fact, it is the vaccine that is given to soldiers in some areas overseas and it was the vaccine used as a first response after 9/11. But not everyone can take Dryvax. In some patients, it causes serious and life threatening side effects such has inflammation of the heart or brain.

The new vaccine, Imvamune, will be compared with Dryvax to determine if it has fewer side effects.
Neither one of the vaccines contain the smallpox virus, so there is no danger of anyone who participates in the trial contracting the disease from the injections.

One of the main concerns in a bioterrorist attack is the time factor. A vaccine must act fast to protect as much of the population in as short a time span as possible. Dryvax can take as long as four week to give a person full protection. The first studies of the new vaccine show that it has the possibility of being much faster acting.

Also anyone who has a condition such as eczema, anyone with immune system conditions or anyone who lives with someone who has these conditions cannot get Dryvax and that means close to 40% of the population would be unprotected.

The World Health Assembly declared that Smallpox was erased back in 1980, but some laboratories around the world do still have samples and it does bring up a concern that it could be used in bioterrism, even though the labs are strictly regulated and monitored.