PMC Pulls Oral Polio Vaccine Application

Pasteur Merieux Connaught's USA division has announced it is withdrawingits pending Food and Drug Administration application for approval to market an oral polio vaccine.

The company, which is also the only distributor of the injectable inactivated polio vaccine Ipol in the USA, had applied to the FDA to become the second manufacturer of an OPV in that market, after Wyeth Lederle Vaccines, according to Dow Jones.

CDC Moves To An All-IPV Schedule Following two years of study, the guidelines regarding administration of the polio vaccine have been changed for the first time since 1961. The CDC recommended wider use of the inactivated polio vaccine, saying that children should receive the vaccine in a combination of inactivated and live oral formulations (Marketletter October 7, 1996). The addition of an injectable inactivated form to the schedule is expected to halve the risk of contracting polio from the oral vaccine. At present, some eight-10 children every year develop polio after being immunized using the oral vaccine.