Nanobacteria Are Present In Vaccines, But Any Health Risks Remain Unknown.(Brief Article)

2001 JUN 6 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

Vaccines are an indispensable weapon in the battle to prevent disease, both in humans and animals. Provision and protection of the vaccine supply is so essential that no possible pathogen is beyond suspicion.

So it is with nanobacteria (NB), a potential infectious agent so new that science is still debating its existence as a "living organism."

Researchers in Finland analyzed six veterinary vaccines and three inactivated human polio vaccines produced in cell culture for NB.

Dr. Neva Ciftcioglu and colleagues found that three of the six European veterinary vaccines contained NB. Of the three distinct lots of polio vaccine from European manufacturers, two lots from manufacturer-1 were NB-positive and one lot from manufacturer-2 was NB-negative. These results, reported at the General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, held May 20-24, 2001, suggest that not all lots of vaccine contain detectable NB.

The public health risk, if any, from nanobacteria is yet to be defined, but nanobacteria have been found in kidney stones, liver and kidney cyst fluids, and implicated in kidney stone formation, Ciftcioglu et al. said.

In the early 1990s, Ciftcioglu and Dr. Olavi Kajander, University of Kuopio, Finland, discovered a minute self-replicating agent, dubbed "nanobacteria," in fetal bovine serum (FBS) that mediates mineral (calcium phosphate) formation under conditions found in blood and urine. NB was subsequently found to contaminate cell cultures widely used in research and to pass through filters commonly used to sterilize vaccines.