Dec 18, 2007 10:38 pm US/Central
Shingles Vaccine Caution Urged Around Infants
Maker Says Patients With Live Vaccine Should Be Careful Around Infants, Immunocompromised
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Iris Cohn decided not to see her newborn granddaughter, Reina, for eight weeks after Cohn learned that the shingles vaccine she got could pose a danger to infants.
CBS
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Merck, the makers of the shingles vaccine, says the exact risks to infants and immunocompromised people exposed to a patient who has received the vaccine is unknown.
CBS
Shingles is a painful outbreak of rash and skin blisters. Anyone who's had chicken pox is at risk. Now one family's concerned about the vaccine that was approved two years ago, taking exterme measures to make sure a new baby is safe.
As Medical Editor Mary Ann Childers reports, the vaccine caused another kind of suffering for one north suburban family. Iris Cohn was not able to touch her granddaughter for eight weeks. She was afraid to, because just after young Reina was born, Iris Cohn got vaccinated against shingles. Iris Cohn's daughter says when she looked at the patient information sheet, it told patients "not to go near newborns, pregnant women or immune compromised people."
Unlike most vaccines for adults, this one uses a live virus. The information warns "transmissions may occur." But how serious is this potential risk?
"We wanted to find out, well could she wear gloves?" Jennifer Cohn, Iris' daughter, said. "Could she wear a mask? If she has no rash ... could she be near her?"
They called Reina's pediatrician, a major medical center, a children's hospital, the CDC, and the vaccine-maker, Merck. No one could say for sure.
"I said 'how could you put a drug out without knowing the answers to these questions?'" Iris Cohn said.
When another doctor at Merck said, to be safe, avoid contact for six to eight weeks, Iris Cohn's self-imposed exile began. She saw her grandbaby every day, but only through the window of a minivan.
Was all this necessary? An expert on the shingles vaccine says he doesn't think so.
"And I would say this to my own wife in terms of my own four granddaughters," said Dr. Alan Harris, who works in the infectious diseases department at Rush University Medical Center.
Harris is a consultant to Merck on the shingles vaccine. He calls the risk theoretical, and says while chicken pox is very contagious, shingles can only be spread when there's direct contact with a rash. In studies and on-going monitoring, there has been no case he knows of where the vaccine has ever caused that rash.
"I would suggest that those parents -- if they're taking their child out to public places -- have just as much or perhaps even more chance of risk to an exposure that they don't even know about," Harris said.
Iris Cohn missed Reina those eight long weeks, but she's not sorry.
"I knew there was a very, very slim chance that I could transmit it, but one in a million is too much," she said.
So what do you do? The chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on infectious diseases tells us he thinks normal contact between a grandparent and an infant is safe as long as the grandparent has no rash.
If the injection site is covered with a bandage or even a sleeve, there's very little risk. The Centers for Disease Control will be publishing a list of recommendations soon.
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