Polio in New York – An Infectious Disease Doctor Explains - SciTechDaily

The New York patient reportedly contracted a form of polio that can be traced back to the live, but weakened, poliovirus used in the oral polio vaccine.

Here he explains what vaccine-derived poliovirus is and why the inactivated polio vaccine currently administered in the U.S.

Originally developed by Albert Sabin, the oral polio vaccine uses a live but weakened poliovirus that one swallows in a sugar cube or droplet.

receive the inactivated polio vaccine.

The weakened form of the live virus in the oral vaccine cannot cause disease directly.

With more than 10 billion doses of the oral polio vaccine administered since 2000, fewer than 800 cases of vaccine-derived polio have been reported.

There’s actually a positive aspect to the fact that the weakened live virus can circulate in the community once oral vaccine recipients shed it in their feces.

The oral polio vaccine is also cheaper and easier to administer than inactivated polio vaccines.

The eradication of polio in the Americas, Europe, and Africa has been accomplished solely through the use of the live oral vaccine.

Once polio has been wiped from a continent, then it is safe to stop using the oral live vaccine and use only the inactivated vaccine, which does prevent disease in recipients and does not pose the rare risk of vaccine-derived paralytic polio.

A new and safer oral polio vaccine that has been engineered not to mutate is now replacing the earlier live-virus vaccine.

Thanks to the tremendous global effort, two of the three viruses that cause polio have been eradicated.

Today endemic polio is only found in Pakistan, with 12 cases of paralytic polio so far in 2022, and Afghanistan, with just one case this year.

Once wild poliovirus has been eradicated from the planet, vaccination efforts may be able to switch to the inactivated polio vaccine, eliminating the risk of any future vaccine-derived cases.

August 4, 2022

August 4, 2022