Systemic allergic reactions to
gelatin included in vaccines as a
stabilizer.
Sakaguchi M, Inouye
S.
Department of Immunology, National Institute of Infectious
Diseases, Tokyo 162-8640, Japan. msakaguc@nih.go.jp
Most of the
children who showed systemic immediate-type reactions, including
anaphylactic shock, to measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccines
had IgE antibodies to gelatin; thus we suspected that the allergic
symptoms are caused by gelatin antigen, which is usually included in
these live-virus vaccines as a stabilizer. We hypothesized that the
anti-gelatin IgE is elicited by immunization with DTaP
(diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis) vaccines, which contained a
small amount of gelatin as a spillover protein after purification of
pertussis toxin. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a case-control
study to determine whether children with anti-gelatin IgE had received
gelatin-containing DTaP vaccines, and it was indeed found that all such
children in the study had immunization histories that included the
gelatin-containing DTaP vaccines. Based on these findings, the vaccine
manufacturers had removed gelatin from all the DTaP and live-virus
vaccines produced in Japan by 2000.