Accidental Infection of Laboratory Worker with Vaccinia

摘要

We report the accidental needlestick inoculation of alaboratory worker with vaccinia virus. Although the patienthad previously been vaccinated against smallpox, severelesions appeared on the fingers. Western blot and poly-merase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymor-phism were used to analyze the virus recovered from thelesions. The vaccinia virus–specific immunoglobulin G lev-els were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbentassay. Our study supports the need for vaccination for lab-oratory workers that routinely handle orthopoxvirus