Abstract

Rabies virus from an organ donor killed four transplanted patients in Texas last year within 8 weeks of the transplant. Two of them had received a kidney, one a liver, and one a vascular graft. Investigators found rhabdovirus particles in baby mice inoculated with samples from the patients. The donor had died of subarachnoid haemorrhage and routine infection screens had been negative. Friends only later recalled that the donor had been bitten by a bat.

New England Journal of Medicine 2005, 352, 1103–11.

Combining vaccines has several advantages, but these are meaningless if the vaccines do not work. A combined vaccine against Streptococcus pneumoniae and group C Neisseria meningitidis did not protect children as well as the single meningitis C vaccine though it provoked a satisfactory immune response against Streptococcus pneumoniae. Moreover, the trial done on 240 infants in the UK found that the combined vaccine reduced the infants’