Smallpox : the strain that was able to eradicate would come from the horse

Pan American Health Organization/Flickr

Published the 12.10.2017 at 08: 00

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For centuries, infection has been terrorizing the crowds. Leaving heavy scarring when it does killed not. It is the smallpox, now extinct, that the vaccination has to his name. But after more than 200 years, the myth collapses. This is not the vaccine version of bovine disease, which resulted in the eradication of the virus.

According to a survey and medical history, conducted in part by the Robert-Koch-Institute, Berlin (Germany), the strain used in the vaccine would, in fact,… of the horse. A conclusion as surprising as the researchers explain in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The shadow of a doubt

At the root of this mystery, a story that every lover of medicine is known on the fingertips. Edward Jenner, british physician, research a treatment against smallpox, which kills by the millions. We are in 1798.

The English scientist, found an innovative solution. It makes a levy on the arm of a milkmaid infected with vaccinia virus, which infected cows. He then inoculate the virus to a child of 8 years. It will never develop signs of smallpox. The vaccine is invented.

Source : Pan American Health Organization

The story could stop there. But in the 1930s, a fellow of Jenner note a detail disturbing. The strain used in the vaccine, large-scale product, is not quite up to the vaccinia (cowpox virus). The analysis of hen eggs used for the production – reveals the presence of another virus. Unknown to the battalion.