Smallpox

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Smallpox lesions

Variola - major and minor; Variola

If the smallpox vaccination is given within 1-4 days of exposure to the disease, it may prevent illness, or at least lessen the degree of illness associated with the disease. Treatment, once the disease symptoms have started, is limited.

There is no agent that has been specifically made for treating smallpox. Sometimes antibiotics are given for secondary infections that may occur. Vaccinia immune globulin (antibodies against a disease similar to smallpox) may help shorten the disease.

If a diagnosis of smallpox were made, exposed persons would need to be isolated immediately. The isolation would include not just the person who contracted the disease, but all other face-to-face contacts with that person.

These individuals would need the vaccine and need to be monitored. Emergency measures to protect a broader segment of the population would have to be implemented immediately, within the recommended guidelines from the CDC and other federal and local health agencies.

In the past, this was a major illness with significant mortality as high as 30%.

• Bacterial infections at the skin at the sites of the lesions
• Pitted scars from pustules
• Arthritis and bone infections
• Pneumonia
• Severe bleeding
• Eye infections
• Brain inflammation (encephalitis)
• Death

If you think you may have been exposed to smallpox, contact your health care provider immediately. Since smallpox has been eradicated, this would be very unlikely, unless you have worked with the virus in a laboratory or there has been an act of bioterrorism.

Review Date: 06/09/2005
Reviewed By: Camille Kotton, M.D., Infectious Diseases Division, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network.