NEW DELHI (PTI): The suggested link between AIDs and contaminated Polio Vaccine produced from African green monkeys (AGM) may have some implications for India says Dr. Subash C. Arya a retired Polio expert of the national institute of communicable diseases (NICD) here.

He told PTI that the Pasteur Institute in Coocur in Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu had imported some AGMs in early 1970s for producing a live oral Polio Vaccine. Some 20000 doses of this Vaccine were released in Tamil Nadu where HIV the virus that causes AIDs surfaced first India.

According to Dr Arya the institute had also imported from former Soviet Union cell cultures (seeds) of AGM for producing the Vaccine at Coonur.

He said he cannot comment on whether the appearance of AIDs in India had anything to do with the release of the Vaccine produced from AGM without examining the unused Vaccine lots that may still remain in Concur.

India is using oral Polio Vaccine in its national immunization programme but AGMs are not used any more.

The possible link between AIDs and the Polio Vaccine has been proposed by American scientists in papers published in the U.S. Journal “Science” and British Medical Journal “Lancet”.

It said that AGM the species used in production of most live Polio Vaccine in the United States was a reservoir of Simian Immuho deficiency virus (SIV) a variant of HIV that causes AID sin Human.

The “Lancet report said that some vaccine lots released for use in the United States were contaminated with virus particles now identified as HIV. At that time HIV was not discovered and health authorities thought the retrovirus particles found in the vaccine were harmless up to 100 organisms per dose.

The report suggested “a link between HIV related retroviruses from AGM in Polio Vaccine Lts. The use of this vaccine by homosexuals in a manner unanticipated when the vaccine was licensed and the onset of the AlD’s epidemic in the U.S The homosexuals used the Polio Vaccine in treatment of Herpes Lesions a sexually transmitted condition and this could have provided a point source of infection that spread to sexual contacts the report said.

Article extracted from this publication >> April 24, 1992