Laboratory staff at US government agency discover smallpox vials

Published: 11-Jul-2014

The sealed vials dating from the 1950s will be destroyed once it has been ascertained whether the virus is live


Long-forgotten vials of smallpox left in a cardboard box have been discovered by staff at a US Food and Drug Administration laboratory located on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bethesda campus in Maryland.

The laboratory was among those transferred from NIH to FDA in 1972, along with the responsibility for regulating biologic products. The FDA has operated laboratories located on the NIH campus since then. Scientists discovered the vials while preparing for the laboratory’s move to the FDA’s main campus.

It is said to be the first time that unaccounted for smallpox has been discovered in the US.

The disease was officially eradicated in the 1980s.

'The vials appear to date from the 1950s. Upon discovery, the vials were immediately secured in a CDC-registered select agent containment laboratory in Bethesda,' said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a statement.

'There is no evidence that any of the vials labelled variola has been breached, and onsite biosafety personnel have not identified any infectious exposure risk to lab workers or the public,' the statement added.

The Division of Select Agents and Toxins (DSAT) of the CDC was notified of the discovery on 1 July.

The vials were subsequently transported to CDC’s high-containment facility in Atlanta, Georgia, on 7 July. Overnight PCR testing done by CDC in the BSL-4 lab confirmed the presence of variola virus DNA.

'Additional testing of the variola samples is underway to determine if the material in the vials is viable (i.e. can grow in tissue culture),' the CDC said.

This testing could take up to two weeks, after which the samples will be destroyed.

There are two official World Health Organization (WHO)-designated repositories for smallpox: CDC in Atlanta, Georgia and the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR) in Novosibirsk, Russia. The WHO oversees the inspection of these smallpox facilities and conducts periodic reviews to certify the repositories for safety and security.

The CDC said it has notified WHO about the discovery, and WHO has been invited to participate in the investigation.

'If viable smallpox is present, WHO will be invited to witness the destruction of these smallpox materials, as has been the precedent for other cases where smallpox samples have been found outside of the two official repositories,' the CDC said.

DSAT, in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is investigating how these samples were originally prepared and subsequently stored in the FDA laboratory.

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