While there is no certainty that we will need to be vaccinated against monkeypox due to the outbreak that is spreading around the world. However, many people no longer forget to remember if they received smallpox vaccine. It’s not for less because it offers 85% monkey protection. In fact, it would be a vaccine that we would receive if necessary. The problem is that it is no longer administered. over 40 years ago, so it’s not easy to remember who wore it and who didn’t. Fortunately, this vaccine left a fairly easily recognizable scar on the hand. This is something like a circle about the size of a pencil eraser, in which the skin is somewhat depressed. Now, what does this have to do with it?
Essentially, this is because the smallpox vaccine was administered with a different needle than those most commonly used today. In fact, not only the needle was different, but also the place where its contents were placed. Instead of an intramuscular injection, the vaccine was administered under the skinsomewhat mimicking the process variolation who inspired the development of the smallpox vaccine.
Therefore, vaccinated people usually have scar. Although sometimes it is so small that it is barely visible, especially if many years have passed. It may seem that it does not exist, but this does not mean that the person in question is not vaccinated.
From variolation to smallpox vaccine
Variolization is a process whose first surviving descriptions come from China and India in the 16th century.
At that time, healthy people were forced to dress in the clothes of smallpox patients so that they would come into contact with smallpox. fluid from your pustules. This prompted the immune system to generate a response that would be useful in the face of future impact of smallpox. Unless the virus killed them in the process, of course.
Although the process improved, the fact that the smallpox vaccine was injected under the skin persisted from year to year.
Later, in the Ottoman Empire, the clothes of the sick were no longer used for inject the virus directly under the skin. What was done was to take samples of pustules from the sick and through various incisions made in the skin of healthy people, to introduce them under the skin. This mechanism was brought to Europe Mary Wortley Montaguethe wife of the British ambassador.
Later it was improved by a village doctor. Edward Jenner. Knowing that many people died in the process, he decided to variolate with samples taken from the pustules of milkmaids. The reason is that they were infected with bovine pox while milking cows and were then protected from human pox. Like monkeypox, bovine pox is much milder than human pox. Therefore, it turned out to be much safer to carry out variolation in this way. Thus was obtained what would later be considered first smallpox vaccine.
And although it improved over time, the fact of introducing it under the skin, as they did in the Ottoman Empire, remained in a certain sense. Actually, this is the reason for the famous smallpox vaccination scar.
Why the scar?
As with variolation, the smallpox vaccine continued to be injected under the skin.
This has always been done, although the tools used have changed. In the 20th century, they mainly used jet injector. This created a narrow, high-pressure stream so that the liquid vaccine penetrated into the outermost layers of the skin. In 1964 an engineer aaron ismah developed an intradermal nozzle that made it easier to administer the smallpox vaccine using a jet injector in a shallower way. But the process can still be improved. To this end, in 1965, an American microbiologist Benjamin Rubin invented the forked needle. It consisted of a narrow steel rod with two ends at one end. It was something like a sewing needle with an incision in the center of the eye. In fact, Rubin was inspired by this dish to develop his invention.
In the 1960s, a bifurcated needle began to be used, with which several very fast punctures were made in a section with a diameter of 5 mm.
A bifurcated needle was dipped into the smallpox vaccine, and then it was pierced through the shoulder perpendicularly. about fifteen times fast in a small round area. Punctures were made over an area of about 5 mm in diameter.
As with variolation, as with the jet injector and split needle, the smallpox vaccine remained just under the skin. The viruses contained in it began to multiply, causing the desired protective response of the immune system. But this was accompanied by the formation conearound the viruses pushing them outside. Later it became the scab that eventually led to the famous scar what we’ve all seen.
This is a small circle, covering approximately the area where the punctures were made. It should be noted that the smallpox vaccine is not the only one with which this administration process has been carried out. For example, BCG directed for the prevention of tuberculosisit was similar, so it also left a slightly different scar.
In any case, if all went well and the recommendations were followed, at least in Spain, all people over the age of 42-45 should have been vaccinated against smallpox. Right now, in a situation where monkeypox outbreakThis is not yet something we should worry about. If the time comes for a new vaccination campaign, it will be necessary to see who wears it, but for now it is enough to be careful, not to the point of despair or panic.
Source: Hiper Textual
