Eczema & Vaccination

Eczema afflicts nearly half a million U.S. children under six -- a statistic that can have serious consequences at vaccination time. An eczematous child inoculated against smallpox with the standard cowpox-virus vaccine may develop a severe and possibly fatal combination of cowpox and eczema known as eczema vaccinatum. Now the University of Colorado's Dr. C. Henry Kempe has resolved the conflict between the child's safety and the requirement for preschool vaccination.

Dr. Kempe, who has long been concerned by the dangers of wholesale, haphazard vaccinations (TIME, May 20), has been working for 20 years to devise a safer vaccine. To the American Pediatric Society in Atlantic City he reported the success that he and his colleague have achieved. Starting with a standard strain of cowpox virus grown in calves, they repeatedly grew it in a series of fertilized eggs. The vaccine from the virus harvested from the last eggs in the series had about the same potency as the standard calf-lymph material and could be given by the usual multiple-puncture method, or injected under the skin, or shot in by an air-pressure gun.

The important difference was that no matter how it was given, children with eczema had less fever and even fewer severe reactions than normal children who got the standard shot. In 1,409 test vaccinations, only two children developed allergic complications, and they were mild and short-lived. Of the test subjects, 300 were later given the legally required shot of standard calf vaccine. Apparently preconditioned, not one suffered ill effects.

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