Will the Military Give Civilians Access to Adenovirus Type 4 Vaccine?

Like most influenza viruses circulating the world, adenoviruses can cause respiratory illness in people.

An adenovirus infection can occur at any age. They can cause cold-like symptoms, sore throat, bronchitis, pneumonia, diarrhea, and pink eye.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), adenoviruses are usually spread through coughing, sneezing, or after touching an infected surface.

Adenoviruses rarely cause serious illness or death.

However, people with weakened immune systems, or existing respiratory or cardiac disease, are at higher risk of developing severe illness from an adenovirus infection, says the CDC.

Recently, 36 cases of human adenovirus type 4 (HAdV-4) were found near military facilities, reported Adriana E. Kajon, Ph.D.

While most of these cases were the common genome types of adenovirus found among military recruits, novel variants were identified among young adults, the authors wrote in CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases.

These researchers believe the reasons for finding this virus in the civilian population are either:

• The public could have been exposed to non-attenuated vaccine strains through fecal shedding from military personnel who were vaccinated from 1971 to 1997,
• These variants were circulating at low prevalence among civilian communities since the 1950s.

Now, these researchers say the HAdV-4 vaccine should be available for everyone.

But, unlike commercial flu vaccines, civilians do not have access to the HAdV-4 vaccine.

These researchers said most of the HAdV-4 isolates included in their study matched variants previously detected among military recruits before the U.S. Department of Defense reinstated the use of the vaccine in 2011.

In their study, these researchers said local physicians should better assess the role of HAdVs as causative agents of severe respiratory illness,” which could prevent the use of antivirals in patients who do not have influenza.

Dr. Kajon, who lead this study, is a scientist in the Infectious Disease Program at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and adjunct faculty at the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and a member of the Center for Infectious Disease and Immunity at the University of New Mexico. She did not disclose any conflicts of interest.

This work was partially supported by the CDC (5U50CK000423), and by the University of New Mexico Infectious Diseases and Inflammation National Institutes of Health Training Grant T32-AI007538.