Posted on 03/28/2003 10:30:05 PM PST by JohnHuang2
hree days after the government suspended smallpox vaccinations for people known to have heart disease, a panel of medical advisers recommended yesterday that people who have three or more major risk factors for cardiac disease — like smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol — also be excluded.
The initial suspension was announced on Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had received reports that seven health care workers had developed cardiac problems after being voluntarily vaccinated as part of the government's program to prepare medical teams to cope with a bioterror attack. Two of the workers, women in their 50's, died of heart attacks.
Health officials said it was not known whether the vaccine caused the heart problems, or whether they were coincidental, but the officials decided to defer vaccinations for some people until the issue could be studied further.
Heart disease includes conditions like a previous heart attack, chest pains, cardiomyopathy or other evidence of coronary artery disease. The recommendation to add risk factors to the list of exclusions was made yesterday at an emergency meeting of a panel of medical experts that advises the disease control centers. Some of the health workers who had heart trouble after being vaccinated had the cardiac risk factors that the panel said should now be used to exclude people from the vaccine program.
The Defense Department, which has already vaccinated 350,000 members of the armed forces, will follow the policy recommended by the disease control centers, said Col. John D. Grabenstein, deputy director of the Army's vaccine program.
The department reported yesterday that a 55-year-old national guardsman, vaccinated on Thursday of last week, had a heart attack this Tuesday and died the next day. But Colonel Grabenstein said, "We've reached the conclusion so far that a relationship between his death and the vaccination is unlikely."
He said the man smoked and had high cholesterol and narrowed coronary arteries. In addition, an autopsy showed, the man had suffered a silent heart attack. Those findings, Colonel Grabenstein said, suggested that the underlying disease, not the vaccination, caused the heart attack.
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