Anthrax vaccine

Anthrax vaccine

Vaccine description
Target	Anthrax

Anthrax vaccines are vaccines to prevent the livestock and human disease anthrax, caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis.^[1]

They have had a prominent place in the history of medicine, from Pasteur's pioneering 19th-century work with cattle (the first effective bacterial vaccine and the second effective vaccine ever) to the controversial late 20th century use of a modern product to protect American troops against the use of anthrax in biological warfare. Human anthrax vaccines were developed by the Soviet Union in the late 1930s and in the US and UK in the 1950s. The current vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was formulated in the 1960s.  

Currently administered human anthrax vaccines include acellular (USA, UK) and live spore (Russia) varieties. All currently used anthrax vaccines show considerable local and general reactogenicity (erythema, induration, soreness, fever) and serious adverse reactions occur in about 1% of recipients.^[2] New third-generation vaccines being researched include recombinant live vaccines and recombinant sub-unit vaccines.