BACKGROUND According to the polio model, severity of disease increases with age at infection. Firstborn children and people belonging to small families are generally infected later and should accordingly have a higher risk of severe polio. However, this model does contradict other explanations of severity of childhood infections including the intensive-exposure model. METHODS To evaluate the ...

PURPOSE To date, polio has not been eradicated and there appears to be a resurgence of the disease. Hence, there is a need to revive decision-making skills to treat the effects of polio. METHODS Here, we outline the aspects of treatment of paralysis following polio based on the literature and personal experience of the authors. The surgical treatment of the lower and upper extremities and the...

It was hoped that following polio eradication, immunisation could be stopped. However the synthesis of polio virus in 2002, made eradication impossible. It is argued that getting poor countries to expend their scarce resources on an impossible dream over the last 10 years was unethical. Furthermore, while India has been polio-free for a year, there has been a huge increase in non-polio acute fl...

BACKGROUND Sensitive poliovirus surveillance to detect vaccine-derived-polioviruses will continue to increase in importance. OBJECTIVE Isolating and identifying poliovirus strains from children of pediatrics age in Nigeria. METHODS A total of 120 fecal samples were randomly collected from children under the age of five who presented with acute flaccid paralysis. Samples were tested by tissu...

UNLABELLED To assess the dynamics of genetic reversion of live poliovirus vaccine in humans, we studied molecular evolution in Sabin-like poliovirus isolates from Nigerian acute flaccid paralysis cases obtained from routine surveillance. We employed a novel modeling approach to infer substitution and recombination rates from whole-genome sequences and information about poliovirus infection dyna...

BACKGROUND The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) began polio eradication activities in 1996. By 2001, DRC was no longer polio endemic. However, wild poliovirus (WPV) transmission was reestablished in 2006 continuing through 2011 (last WPV case onset 20 December 2011), and vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (VDPV2) outbreaks occurred during 2004-2012 (last VDPV2 case onset 4 April 2012). Gap...

The WHO recommends complete withdrawal of oral polio vaccine (OPV) type 2 by April 2016 globally and replacing with at least one dose of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV). However, high-cost, limited supply of IPV, persistent circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses transmission and need for subsequent boosters remain unresolved. To meet this critical need, a novel strategy of a low-cost col...

A large number of patients previously affected by polio have symptoms, including increased weakness and fatigue, which are collectively known as a post-polio syndrome. Prospective measurements of strength and endurance using twitch interpolation in post-polio patients are lacking and hence the exact rate of decline in muscle function in these patients is not well defined. We therefore measured ...

Wild poliovirus type 3 (WPV3) has not been seen anywhere since the last case of WPV3-associated paralysis in Nigeria in November 2012. At the time of writing, the most recent case of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) in Nigeria occurred in July 2014, and WPV1 has not been seen in Africa since a case in Somalia in August 2014. No cases associated with circulating vaccine-derived type 2 poliovirus (c...

BACKGROUND Eight outbreaks of paralytic polio attributable to circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) have highlighted the risks associated with oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) use in areas of low vaccination coverage and poor hygiene. As the Polio Eradication Initiative enters its final stages, it is important to consider the extent to which these viruses spread under different conditions...