FDA warns doctors about Glaxo rotavirus vaccine

Image via Wikipedia

clipped from news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON – U.S. health officials urged pediatricians Monday to temporarily stop using one of two vaccines against a leading cause of diarrhea in babies, after discovering that doses of GlaxoSmithKline's Rotarix were contaminated with bits of an apparently benign pig virus. Glaxo's vaccine has been used in millions of children worldwide, including 1 million in the U.S., with no signs of safety problems — and the pig virus isn't known to cause any kind of illness in people or animals But vaccines are supposed to be sterile, and because there is a competing vaccine against diarrhea-causing rotavirus that has tested clean — Merck's RotaTeq — the FDA decided to err on the side of caution. Rotavirus causes severe diarrhea and is a leading child killer in developing countries. In the U.S., with better health care, about 55,000 children a year were hospitalized for rotavirus infections and several dozen died each year before vaccination began

Related articles by Zemanta

• FDA Warns Doctors About Glaxo Rotavirus Vaccine (abcnews.go.com)
• FDA Suspends Glaxo Rotavirus Vaccine as Precaution (abcnews.go.com)
• FDA suspends Glaxo rotavirus vaccine as precaution (thenewstribune.com)
• FDA suspends Glaxo rotavirus vaccine as precaution (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• FDA suspends Glaxo diarrhea vaccine, but no safety risk (ctv.ca)
• FDA: Stop Using Rotarix Vaccine (until we get more data) (medicineandtechnology.com)
• FDA: Rotavirus vaccine contaminated (cnn.com)
• Saving lives with rotavirus vaccines (one.org)