The poliovirus is often thought of as an antiquated disease that is not a prevalent risk to people’s health around the world. However, the poliovirus is still wreaking havoc throughout many countries and is becoming increasingly harder to control. While in late 2019, health officials announced that two out of the three wild strains of polio had been eradicated, there was one strain, Type 1, that was still causing health crises in various parts of the world. While it might be assumed that because a vaccine for the virus had been developed and therefore it should be easy to eradicate, that unfortunately could not be further from the truth. As several obstacles, such as rumors surrounding the vaccine and what it is being used for, have deterred people from receiving the vaccine, no other obstacle has been as much of an impediment as the health issues surrounding the oral polio vaccine (OPV).
While the OPV is a widely used form of the polio vaccine, it has been found to have the ability to mutate into a specific form of polio that can paralyze those who are unvaccinated, specifically children. The other vaccine used is the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) which includes an inactivated poliovirus within the vaccination; the OPV includes an alive, but weakened, poliovirus that usually can’t cause disease. This health crisis caused by the mutated OPV virus has resulted in the need for a new vaccine that is not only cost-effective but contains a virus that will not mutate and cause paralysis and other side effects in those infected with it. While this has led to certain organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to step in and help with funding and distribution, many research institutes and universities have also begun to develop and test new vaccines that could solve the issues surrounding the OPV. One of these universities testing and researching new vaccinations and new methods of manipulating the poliovirus is the Uniformed Services University (USU).
As the issues surrounding OPV have become prevalent, organizations like the WHO have urged that researchers attempt to develop a safer, but still cost-effective, vaccine that will eradicate the chance of new strain of polio being spread. The WHO also stresses that it would be beneficial for the new vaccine to be an OPV instead of an IPV as those vaccines tend to be less cost-effective as well as the fact that IPV’s can be dangerous when developing as they contain deadly “wild” strains of the virus. These demands have been the driving principles for the research being done at USU, where a new polio vaccine that contains strains of the virus exposed to large levels of gamma radiation has been tested successfully. In a recent study published by the USU regarding the newly developed vaccine, they claim that inactivating the virus with gamma radiation is not only cost-effective but could also be the solution to the current polio issue surrounding the OPV. As the poliovirus and its vaccines have caused a plethora of health crises in the past and now, it is important to note how the research conducted and the solutions proposed as it is very likely that this problem will once again arise in the future concerning another virus and its vaccine.
References
McNeil, Donald. “Two Strains of Polio Are Gone, but the End of the Disease Is Still Far Off.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Oct. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/health/polio-strain-eradication.html?searchResultPosition=1.
“Scientists Develop Safer, Less Costly Polio Vaccine.” News Wise, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 31 Jan. 2020, https://www.newswise.com/articles/scientists-develop-safer-less-costly-polio-vaccine.
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