United States-U.S.S.R. medical exchange missions, 1956 : microbiology and epidemiology.

  • United States Public Health Service
Date:
1957]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: United States-U.S.S.R. medical exchange missions, 1956 : microbiology and epidemiology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    group on this subject, details of the technical procedures in their preparation have been published during the past several years in Soviet journals. Smorodintsev stated that all three vaccines are prepared in embryonated eggs and that the measles vaccine virus now adapted to chick embryos originally was cultivated in tissue culture. The measles vaccine has been developed by Professor Sergiev, who has per- fected it sufficiently to consider its large- scale use in children within a short time. The mumps vaccine was mentioned as a promis- ing preparation though it is still in an ex- perimental stage and is not ready for wide practical application. Professor Smorodintsev stated that live influenza virus vaccine is prepared from the allantoic fluid of chick embryos infected with several standard strains of epidemic influ- enza, including, I believe, 1 strain of type A, 1 of A prime, and 2 or 8 strains of group B. The vaccine is provided as a lyophilized pow- der which can be insufflated directly into the nasal passages or, if a liquid atomizer is used, it is reconstituted with sterile water. Vaccination has to be repeated approxi- mately every 12 to 18 months in order to maintain adequate immunity. Smorodintsev stated that influenza morbidity can be tre- mendously diminished with this vaccine and that “the body selects the strains of the living virus types to which it has no preexist- ing immunity, allowing these strains to mul- tiply in the respiratory passages while the ‘useless’ strains, that is, those to which the patient is immune, are suppressed and can- not propagate in the patient’s tissues.” Ac- cording to Smorodintsev, during the past few years more than 10,000,000 individuals have received this vaccine annually. He believes that, with increasing use of the vaccine, a great proportion of the population eventually will be protected. The list of contraindications to vaccina- tion includes the more general types of un- desirable conditions such as acute febrile or respiratory diseases, chronic lung diseases, cardiovascular insufficiency, marked debilita- tion of the patient, and the late months of pregnancy. Not mentioned in this list is 8 the fact that the vaccine should not be used in children under the age of 7 years because of the frequency and severity of undesirable side reactions, a point which Professor Smo- rodintsev specifically discussed. He was en- thusiastic about the possibility of using the killed virus influenza vaccine developed in the United States for immunization of the Soviet preschool children. The anti-influenza serum was described as a polyvalent serum prepared in horses (?) against the strains of infiuenza, including A, A prime, and B. The serum is provided in dry powder form. Professor Smorodintsev felt that this serum has a definite therapeutic efficacy if administered sufficiently early (on the first or second day of disease), or when administered to members of a family which needs protection because of a case of influen- za in the household. For therapeutic pur- poses, the serum has to be administered sev- eral times each day. For prophylaxis, it is given about once a week during the entire period of the epidemic outbreak. According to Smorodintsev, there are no contraindica- tions to its use at any time or at any age [other than sensitization to horse serum?]. Early laboratory diagnosis of epidemic in- fluenza was another topic mentioned several times by Professor Smorodintsev. He pointed out that often it is important for the epi- demiologist to establish early the fact that an outbreak of influenza is occurring, what- ever virus type is eventually established as the cause of the outbreak. Such.a diagnosis, he claims, can be accomplished by impression smears of nasal secretions from the clinical cases of influenza. According to Smorodint- sev, in 50 to 60 percent of influenza cases it can be specifically established that the pa- tient is suffering from influenza by the pre- sence of characteristic eosinophilic inclusion bodies in the nasal epithelial cells. The tech- nique of making impression smears consists of introducing a narrow thin cover slip into the posterior nares, allowing the removed secretions to dry, and staining the prepara- tion with a differential stain for inclusion bodies. (As already noted, Smorodintsev said that these methods and procedures have been adequately described in their publica- tions during the past 5 or 7 years).
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