As a virologist who has worked on poliovirus since 1979, I would be remiss if I did not note that today, 24 October, is World Polio Day. World Polio Day was established by Rotary International over a decade ago to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop a vaccine against …
The World Health Organization’s campaign to eradicate poliomyelitis made impressive inroads in 2012: only 212 cases were reported, compared with 620 the previous year; moreover, India remained polio-free. The dark side of this story is that as wild polio is eliminated, vaccine-associated poliomyelitis moves in to take its place. The landmark decision by WHO to …
WHO will switch to type 2 inactivated poliovirus vaccine Read More »
An outbreak of ten cases of poliomyelitis caused by circulating vaccine-derivied poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) is ongoing in Pakistan, centered in the Kila Abdulla/Pishin area of Baluchistan. The same virus strain has spread to the neighboring Kandahar province in Afghanistan, where two paralytic cases have been reported. Vaccine-derived poliomyelitis is a well-known consequence of immunization …
Deep sequencing – which identified a viral contaminant of the rotavirus vaccine Rotarix – could have revealed the presence of simian virus 40 (SV40) in the poliovirus vaccine, had the technique been available in the 1950s. Exposure of over 100 million Americans to SV40, and many more worldwide, could have been avoided, as well as the debate …
Last week on TWiV #26 Rich Condit and I were reminiscing about the possibility that we had received the virus SV40 along with our polio immunizations. That discussion prompted me to examine my immunization record for poliovaccine that my Mother had given to me in the early 1990s. She was cleaning out her house and …
Learning vaccinology from an immunization record Read More »
Poliovirus is the etiologic agent of the paralytic disease known as poliomyelitis. It’s also the virus I’ve worked on for most of my career. The World Health Organization is in the midst of a massive effort to eradicate the disease, an undertaking that has encountered a number of obstacles. In coming posts I’d like to …
