Post-9/11 vaccines linked to heart risk
Miami Herald
A study showed that people who received smallpox vaccinations after the Sept. 11 attacks suffered a higher rate of heart inflammation than ever documented.
ATLANTA - (AP) -- Smallpox shots may have triggered a painful heart inflammation in a very small number of emergency workers vaccinated after the Sept.11 attacks, researchers say.
A study in today's Journal of the American Medical Association showed a higher rate of heart inflammation cases than ever documented in people who got smallpox vaccinations.
''I think that was completely not anticipated,'' Dr. Inger Damon, an author of the study, said.
Overall, however, the vaccine appears to carry an extremely small risk of serious side effects, researchers reported after looking at nearly 700,000 civilians and soldiers who received vaccinations after Sept. 11.
The United States ended routine childhood vaccination against smallpox in 1971, and the World Health Organization reported the disease was eradicated in 1980.
But about 15 months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government ordered certain military personnel vaccinated and recommended shots for front-line healthcare workers.
The smallpox vaccine, Dryvax, made by Wyeth Laboratories, has long been suspected of triggering neurological complications, including encephalitis, in rare cases.
But Dryvax was not associated with heart problems until 2003, when three adults died suddenly of heart attacks.
As a precaution, health officials advised people with heart disease to skip the vaccination.
EMERGENCY WORKERS
One of the studies published Wednesday looked at emergency responders, a group made up largely of female healthcare workers ages 40 to 64.
Researchers counted 100 possible cases of serious side effects in 37,901 people who got the shots from January to October 2003.
Among the 100 were 21 cases of nonfatal heart inflammation and six heart attacks, two of which were fatal.
