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The CDC has quickly removed a page from their website, which is now cached here, admitting that more than 98 million Americans received one or more doses of polio vaccine within an 8-year span when a proportion of the vaccine was contaminated with a cancer causing polyomavirus called SV40. It has been estimated that 10-30 million Americans could have received an SV40 contaminated dose of the vaccine.

It may be possible to reverse type 1 diabetes by training a patient's own immune system to stop attacking their body, an early trial suggests. Their immune system destroys the cells that make insulin, the hormone needed to control blood sugar levels. A study in 80 patients, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, showed a vaccine could retrain their immune system. Experts described the results as a "significant step". Normally a vaccine teaches the immune system to attack bacteria or viruses that cause disease, such as the polio virus. Researchers at the Stanford University Medical Centre used a vaccine...

Recently immunized people are not more apt to develop Guillain-Barre syndrome Shortly after getting a vaccination, people are no more likely to develop a dangerous nerve-damaging condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome, or GBS, than they are at other times, a new analysis finds. Roger Baxter of Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland, and his colleagues reviewed medical records from 1994 to 2006 of more than 3 million Kaiser members and found 415 diagnoses of GBS. Only 25 of these people had received any vaccine in the six weeks prior to being diagnosed with the condition. None were children. Analyses showed that...

Federal researchers shut down a clinical trial of an HIV vaccine involving about 2,500 subjects after it is found to be ineffective at preventing healthy subjects from contracting the virus.

A first-ever vaccine created by University of Guelph researchers for gut bacteria common in autistic children may also help control some autism symptoms. The groundbreaking study by Brittany Pequegnat and Guelph chemistry professor Mario Monteiro appears this month in the journal Vaccine. They developed a carbohydrate-based vaccine against the gut bug Clostridium bolteae. C. bolteae is known to play a role in gastrointestinal disorders, and it often shows up in higher numbers in the GI tracts of autistic children than in those of healthy kids. More than 90 per cent of children with autism spectrum disorders suffer from chronic, severe...

On Thursday (April 4), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it had begun work on a vaccine against H7N9, a new bird-flu virus causing illness in China. So far, health officials have reported that 16 people have become sick with the virus, six of whom died. Currently, the virus does not appear to spread between people. The CDC plans to "build" the virus to use it in its vaccine, rather than wait for a sample to ship from China, the New York Times reported. Using the H7N9 genetic sequence as a blueprint, CDC researchers will synthesize genes...

A US presidential commission has paved the way for testing an anthrax vaccine on children, prompting criticism that participants would be "guinea pigs".But the bioethical issues report said researchers would have to overcome many hurdles before conducting any trial.Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius must decide whether to act on the paper's recommendations.

Medical research typically is a cautious, restrained affair—but every once in a while, scientists try out a radical idea. Take this one for example: injecting a live virus into someone with cancer on the off chance that the virus might go ahead and kill some cancer cells. Nuts? Actually this approach, called viral oncolysis, has been around since at least the 1950s, when West Nile virus, thought harmless at the time, was injected into people with an array of advanced and seemingly hopeless cancers. Some got a little better, some a little worse, but the approach fell away, eclipsed by...

ATLANTA (AP) — It turns out this year's flu shot is doing a startlingly dismal job of protecting older people, the most vulnerable age group. The vaccine is proving only 9 percent effective in those 65 and older against the harsh strain of the flu that is predominant this season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. Health officials are baffled as to why this is so. But the findings help explain why so many older people have been hospitalized with the flu this year.

Emelie is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she's often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living. Emelie is one of around 800 children in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe who developed narcolepsy, an incurable sleep disorder, after being immunized with the Pandemrix H1N1 swine flu vaccine made by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline in 2009.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding the development of technology to package oral vaccines for delivery using pollen. The exterior of pollen grains are shells made of a non-allergenic, naturally durable polymer. The interior of the shell can be emptied, which eliminates any allergy-producing material, and then filled with vaccine, according to GlobalBiodefense.com. The shell’s durability also gives it a substantial advantage over traditional oral tablets because it serves to protect the vaccine while it is in the body. Stomach acids, for example, often limit a medication’s absorption. A pollen shell would protect the vaccine until it reaches...

All Signs Indicate That This Flu Season Is Going To Be Brutal Jennifer WelshDec. 4, 2012, 6:53 PMThe flu season could be especially bad this year, and is one of the earliest-starting flu seasons in a decade, said Thomas Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control. "This is the earliest regular flu season we've had in nearly a decade, since the 2003-2004 flu season. That was an early and severe flu year," CDC director Thomas Frieden said in a teleconference yesterday Dec. 3. That season was very severe, especially for children, they said. This is much different than we...

(WASHINGTON) -- A vaccine for the H5N1 avian flu, or bird flu, has been approved by a panel of experts to be stockpiled for emergency use in case of a pandemic. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted 14-0 in favor that the vaccine, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Quebec, was in compliance with licensing standards under accelerated approval regulations, reports MedPage Today. H5N1 currently does not spread as easily among humans as it does among domestic foul, but flu experts have feared it could mutate and potentially lead to a pandemic. In infected humans, the virus is...

Last year's flu shot won't shield you this year: Two new strains of influenza have begun circling the globe, and the updated vaccine appears to work well against them, government officials said Thursday. [snip] Influenza strains constantly evolve, and some cause more illness than others. "...strains from the H3N2 family tend to be harsher than some other flu types, and a new H3N2 strain is included in this year's vaccine because it is circulating in parts of the world. Only one ingredient in this year's flu vaccine was retained from last year's, protection against the H1N1 strain that caused the...

We've seen promising moves towards developing a universal or near-universal influenza vaccine, but researchers at the Donald P. Shiley BioScience Center have taken a different tack to ward of the crafty virus. Although the flu virus actively keeps the immune system from detecting it for a few days, giving it time to gain a foothold, the researchers have found that a powerful synthetic protein, known as EP67, can kick start the immune system so that it reacts almost immediately to all strains of the virus. Previously, EP67 had primarily been used to help activate the immune response by being added...

A single-dose vaccine capable of providing immunity against the effects of cocaine offers a novel and groundbreaking strategy for treating cocaine addiction is described in an article published Instant Online in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (http://www.liebertpub.com) The article is available free online at the Human Gene Therapy website (http://www.liebertpub.com/hum). "This is a very novel approach for addressing the huge medical problem of cocaine addiction," says James M. Wilson, MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief, and Director of the Gene Therapy Program, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia. In...

Back in November, the Wall Street Journal featured a prominent article with the following headline: “The Hidden Toll of Traffic Jams; Scientists Increasingly Link Vehicle Exhaust With Brain-Cell Damage, Higher Rates of Autism”. It was careful to point out that current evidence is circumstantial; no one is certain about such a connection between traffic, exhaust, brain-cell damage and autism. After all, vehicles today put out far, far less pollution than those operating decades ago, when autism rates were far, far lower. It highlighted one study published in Environmental Health Perspectives which found that children born to mothers within 1,000...

A vaccine that can train cancer patients' own bodies to seek out and destroy tumour cells has been developed by scientists. The therapy, which targets a molecule found in 90 per cent of all cancers, could provide a universal injection that allows patients' immune systems to fight off common cancers including breast and prostate cancer. Preliminary results from early clinical trials have shown the vaccine can trigger an immune response in patients and reduce levels of disease. The scientists behind the vaccine now hope to conduct larger trials in patients to prove it can be effective against a range of...

A vaccine delivered in an injection or nasal spray to prevent heart attacks could be available within five years. Scientists have discovered that the drug stimulates the body's immune system to produce antibodies which prevent heart disease by stopping fat building up in the arteries. It is the first time that the underlying cause of heart disease has been targeted. Current treatments focus on using drugs to reduce cholesterol levels and blood pressure. The vaccine can cut the build up of fat in arteries by up to 70 per cent, according to tests by researchers at Lund University in Sweden....

The Texas Department of State Health Services will drop vaccines from the air Wednesday. It's part of the annual effort to protect people and livestock from rabies.