Government agencies were notified of the discovery on 1 July, after National Institutes of Health NIH employees discovered the vials labelled "variola", also known as smallpox. The vials were subsequently transported to a secure facility in Atlanta, Georgia, on 7 July. Tests will be conducted on the material to determine if it is viable before it destroyed, the CDC said. The virus may remain deadly even after freeze-drying, though is it typically kept cold to remain alive.
The WHO currently oversees two designated repositories for smallpox; one in Atlanta as well as one in Novosibirsk, Russia. It is the not the first time vials of smallpox have been unexpectedly discovered.
However, research for effective vaccines, drugs and diagnostics for smallpox continues in the event it is used as a bioterror weapon. The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was reported in In , the World Health Organization declared that smallpox had been eradicated. Currently, there is no evidence of naturally occurring smallpox transmission anywhere in the world.
Although a worldwide immunization program eradicated smallpox disease decades ago, small quantities of smallpox virus officially still exist in two research laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia, and in Russia.
NIAID supports basic, preclinical, and clinical research needed to advance product development for biodefense and emerging infectious diseases. Specifically, this broad-spectrum approach is being used to develop products effective against a variety of pathogens and toxins; find technologies that can be widely applied to improve multiple classes of products; and establish platforms that can reduce the time and cost of creating new products.
This is evident in both the treatment and vaccine research NIAID has supported for smallpox, outlined below. To learn about risk factors for smallpox and current prevention and treatment strategies visit the MedlinePlus smallpox site.
The Dryvax vaccine was used in smallpox eradication, and the United States has enough of its successor, Acam, available to vaccinate the population in the case of a terrorist attack. Prior to availability of Acam, a NIAID-supported clinical trial that found that Dryvax could successfully be diluted up to five times and retain its effectiveness.
They are now attempting to grow the virus in cell culture under the highest level of containment to determine whether it is still viable, and expect results in two weeks. The NIH believes that the box that held the smallpox vials dates back to the s, but the virus is extremely stable in its powdered form and could still be infectious. But most experts believe that numerous stocks exist around the world, whether in clandestine labs or preserved in human tissue , such as the scabs used for immunizations against smallpox into the twentieth century.
A similarly forgotten stock of smallpox was found in a lab in Eastern Europe in the s, for instance, and more recently at the former Swiss Serum and Vaccine Institute in Bern, says Peter Jahrling, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Maryland.
And those are only the stocks that officials know about: Jahrling says that he found out about the latest discovery when White House officials were discussing how to notify the WHO. He says that in the past, the response to such discoveries would probably have been simply to heat the virus to very high temperatures to kill it. But the case is unusual, Damon says, because the vials were stored in a cold unit instead of in a liquid nitrogen freezer, as the official stocks are.
The NIH says that it plans to conduct a comprehensive search of all its laboratory spaces as soon as possible. But such a move may not be sufficient to find other forgotten stocks, if they exist, says Jahrling, because disorganized scientists could have squirrelled samples away in unexpected places decades ago. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar.
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