According to the Center for Disease Control‘s website, polio is a severe and inhibiting disease that can be prevented almost entirely by one simple measure. You guessed it. Vaccination. What’s interesting about the polio vaccine is that different forms of it, either oral or inactivated, can be given to a person. Even more interesting is that different vaccines are used in different countries. Lets investigate further.
The poliovirus causes the disease polio (aka Poliomyelitis) and is a single-stranded RNA virus. According to a recently updated post by the World Health Organization, the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) uses a killed version of the virus while the oral polio vaccine (OPV) uses three live attenuated virus serotypes. Regardless of the type of vaccine, they both perform the same function of allowing the host to make memory cells and antibodies for the virus in order to stay healthy if they do again come in contact with the virus. Basically, as we learned in class, vaccines allow the host’s body to mimic a response to an infection, without the actual getting sick part. This is why vaccines are amazing. As I mentioned earlier, different forms of the polio virus are used in different countries. The same article mentions that over the course of a few centuries, new forms of vaccines have been researched and developed to accommodate for different countries. According to the same post, Scandinavia and the Netherlands are two notable counties that have successfully eradicated polio through IPV use. Other countries use OPV simply because it is easy to administer an oral vaccine and it does not require much (or any) medical training. Injected vaccines, on the other hand, require training, proper aseptic technique, and is overall just easier to mess up. Because of this, oral polio vaccines are much more practical and used mainly in unwealthy or medically underdeveloped countries that need a quick and simple way to vaccinate the population.
As you know if you’ve read my previous posts regarding vaccines, I am a clear and strong advocate for them. Vaccines save people and those around them from many harmful, deadly, and preventable diseases like polio. The persistent issue of poor healthcare in third-world countries that lead to constant spread of disease is something that must be combated. Perhaps oral vaccines are the answer? If we can get more unwealthy countries vaccinated without worrying about proper administrative technique or training, how great would that be? Of course issues of financing these vaccines and getting them distributed to the needy population arise but overall in my opinion, this is big win-win situation.
Microbiology for Smarties 