Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, January 28, 1994                   TAG: 9401280086
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BETHESDA, MD.                                LENGTH: Short

DRUG MAKER SEEKS OK FOR CHICKEN POX VACCINE

An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration decided the experimental vaccine has proven safe and effective for use by children and adults.

The FDA still must approve the vaccine.

The panel stopped short of recommending immediate approval of the vaccine, saying some questions remained unanswered, including whether to give children one shot or two and whether it could be given at the same time as children get their measles immunizations.

"It will save lives, lives that are precious and can never be replaced," said Rebecca Cole, a North Carolina woman who has fought for approval of the vaccine since her 12-year-old son died of chicken pox in 1988.

Chicken pox afflicts about 4 million people a year. It can be deadly in infants and adults with immune problems. It kills up to 90 people a year and hospitalizes another 9,000.

A chicken pox vaccine has been used in high-risk children in Japan for 20 years with no known ill effects and for almost 10 years there in healthy children.

Merck & Co. is seeking FDA approval to market in the United States a chicken pox vaccine called Varivax, which is made of the same strain of chicken pox virus that the Japanese vaccine uses.