Natural selection for rash-forming genotypes of the varicella-zoster vaccine virus detected within immunized human hosts.

ABSTRACT: The Oka vaccine strain is a live attenuated virus that is routinely administered to children in the United States and Europe to prevent chickenpox. It is effective and safe but occasionally produces a rash. The vaccine virus has accumulated mutations during its attenuation, but the rashes are not explained by their reversion, unlike complications reported for other viral vaccines. Indeed, most of the novel mutations distinguishing the Oka vaccine from the more virulent parental virus have not actually become fixed. Because the parental alleles are still present, the vaccine is polymorphic at >30 loci and therefore contains a mixture of related viruses. The inoculation of >40 million patients has consequently created a highly replicated evolutionary experiment that we have used to assess th

SUBMITTER: Quinlivan ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1765436 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature