Variolation had a 0.5–2 percent mortality rate, considerably less than the 20–30 percent mortality rate of the disease. Two reports on the Chinese practice of inoculation were received by the Royal Society in London in 1700; one by Dr. Martin Lister who received a report by an employee of the East India Company stationed in China and another by Clopton Havers.Lady Mary Wortley Montagu observed smallpox inoculation during her stay in the Ottoman Empire, writing detailed accounts of the practice in her letters, and enthusiastically promoted the procedure in England upon her return in 1718. According to Voltaire (1742), the Turks derived their use of inoculation from neighbouring Circassia. Voltaire does not speculate on where the Circassians derived their technique from, though he reports that the Chinese have practiced it "these hundred years". In 1721, Cotton Mather and colleagues provoked controversy in Boston by inoculating hundreds. After publishing The present method of inoculating for the small-pox in 1767, Dr Thomas Dimsdale was invited to Russia to variolate the Empress Catherine the Great of Russia and her son, Grand Duke Paul, which he successfully did in 1768. In 1796, Edward Jenner, a doctor in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, rural England, discovered that immunity to smallpox could be produced by inoculating a person with material from a cowpox lesion. Cowpox is a poxvirus in the same family as variola. Jenner called the material used for inoculation vaccine from the root word vacca, which is Latin for cow.
Pegaspargase, sold under the brand name Oncaspar, is a medication used in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Often it is used together with anthracycline, vincristine, and corticosteroids (for example prednisone and dexamethasone). Pegaspargase can be administered either via an intravenous infusion or a intramuscular injection.Known side effects include allergic reactions, coagulopathy, high blood sugar, affected liver function, pancreas inflammation, and blood clots in the brain. There is no data regarding the usage of pegaspargase during pregnancy. Therefor caution should be observed and pegaspargase should only be used during pregnancy when the benefits outweigh the possible risks. Pegaspargase is a modified version of the enzyme asparaginase which has undergone PEGylation. It works by breaking down the amino acid asparagine that are circulating in the bloodstream. The circulating asparagine is essential for the cancer cells to enable growth since they cant produce their own, in contrast to normal cells. The normal cells are therefor less affected by pegaspargase. Pegaspargase was approved for medical use in the United States in 1994. It is on the World Health Organizations List of Essential Medicines. It is made by Sigma-Tau. References
External links
"Pegaspargase". Drug Information Portal. U.S. National Library of Medicine.