Rotarix Vaccine Suspended as Precaution

Doctors should stop giving babies one of the two vaccines that fights a leading cause of diarrhea, U.S. officials said March 22. The Associated Press wrote about the announcement. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said doses of Rotarix are contaminated. They were found to contain broken pieces of DNA from a pig virus. Rotarix is one of two vaccines against rotavirus. It is made by GlaxoSmithKline. The other vaccine is RotaTeq, made by Merck. The FDA said the pig virus is not known to cause any kind of illness in people or animals. There is no known risk to children who have received the vaccine. But the FDA decided to err on the side of caution. Officials urged parents to get their children the RotaTeq vaccine instead. Before the vaccines were available, about 55,000 U.S. children were hospitalized each year with rotavirus infections.