The demonization of immunization
Shots get the once-over
What is a vaccine?
Immunization demystified
Asking How
Vaccine Side Effects Probed
When science gets hijacked
NBC News chief medical editor tells why she broke her silence
Insourced to India
A vaccine for a scourge of the developing world
Peet’s passion
The medical education of Amanda Peet
Field yields
Can genetically engineered plants provide vaccines?
Shoot it, don’t smoke it
An injectable tobacco-grown vaccine
Golden needles
Vaccines for seniors
Grow up
Can vaccines built for kids work in older immune systems too?
By Mitzi Baker
Photo by Stanford Visual Art Services
A few Stanford scientists are part of a vanguard seeking explanations for adverse reactions that occur following vaccination — which, rare as they are, cause great concern. The United States has a comprehensive, well-established system for assuring vaccine safety, says John Iskander, MD, the associate director for science of the immunization safety office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Typically, though, the agency estimates risk through analysis of adverse-events reports.
The goal of a small CDC program launched in 2001, the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment network, is to take the knowledge to a new level: to figure out the mechanisms for how these undesirable side effects occur.
“CISA bridges the gap to understanding the one in 10,000, the one in 100,000, even the one in a million patients who experiences an adverse reaction,” Iskander says. “We want to understand the underlying biology of that to predict and prevent it.”
The rarity of severe adverse reactions makes studying them challenging, says Iskander. To help find sufficient numbers of these reactions, CISA, with a $2.5 million annual budget, partners with researchers at Stanford and five other medical centers — Boston Medical Center, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, Northern California Kaiser Permanente and Vanderbilt University — that have the volume of patients needed for meaningful study.
At Stanford, Cornelia Dekker, MD, professor of pediatrics, serves as principal investigator of CISA research. She has several CISA-funded projects under way:
This kind of information can’t come soon enough for parents and the doctors who struggle to decide which vaccines special children should receive.
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