• More Blogs
• Observations »
• Bering in Mind »
• Cross-check »
• Extinction Countdown »
• Solar at Home »
• Expeditions »
• Guest Blog »
• Anecdotes from the Archive »

Minnesota health officials are reporting an unusual death linked to a strain of polio once used in vaccines.

The Minnesota Department of Health said yesterday that a man, whom they did not identify, with symptoms of the paralyzing disease died last month. The officials said that he was infected with a strain of polio used in an oral, live-virus polio vaccine that was discontinued in the U.S. in 2000, suggesting that he caught the infection from someone who had received the live vaccine before it was pulled from the market. Polio vaccines used in the U.S. today are injected and contain only inactivated virus, though live-virus vaccines are still used in some developing countries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The health department didn’t release any details about the man, including his age, but said he had a weakened immune system and multiple health problems.

Since 1961, there have been only 45 reported cases in the world of so-called vaccine-derived paralytic polio (disease from a mutated version of the vaccine strain) in people with immune deficiencies, according to Minnesota officials. It's transmitted when an unvaccinated person or someone with a weakened immune system comes in contact with the polio shed in the stool of a person who received the oral vaccine. That disease is distinct from vaccine-associated paralytic polio (infection from the strain in the oral vaccine), of which an estimated one case occurs for every 3 million doses of the oral vaccine, said Aaron Devries, an epidemiologist with the Minnesota agency.

The last U.S. case of naturally occurring polio (virus caught in the community, not from a vaccine) was in 1979. The disease is still endemic in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, where it resurged last year, CDC officials recently reported.

Polio virus coating protein/David S. Goodsell, Scripps Research Institute, U.S. Government via Wikimedia Commons

3 Comments

1. 1. IC Blues 10:58 AM 4/16/09

   This unfortunate accident, with respect to the bereaved ones, can provide new information to develop better vaccines. It opened my eyes also, because previously I hadn't even noticed whether the polio vaccine given in my country was the oral/live kind or not.
   
   I hope nobody will twist this news to support anti-vaccination measures. Although my country is still plagued by some diseases against which vaccines are available, including polio, there's a growing number of people who stand against vaccines (many of them, perplexingly, for some uncanny, debatable religious reasons). They like to grab every opportunity to present 'evidence' (despite false, incomplete or misinterpreted) that vaccines are totally dangerous.
   
   A long, deep sigh..

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. nfiertel 10:53 PM 4/16/09

   When I was a child I never had the chance to learn to swim as polio was raging across the US at that time and beaches and pools were not open. How wonderful it was when I got that cherry syrup that would guarantee that I would no longer be a possible victim in an iron lung which was the common result at that time. I guess that vaccine was not the best compared to the injectable but it saved millions nonetheless in spite of a few sad cases that apparently proved lethal to immunity compromised people.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

3. 3. scientistmom 05:39 AM 4/17/09

   The question to ask is... Why, when it was know that the oral vaccination can induce polio, was it continued? Where is the oversight? Are the individuals in the countries sent the oral vaccine expendable in comparison to the folks in the US? Or was it deamed by the media to be an 'act of charity and generosity' that the doses were donated or gifted to those countries?
   This, as well as each and every case of vaccine induced polio was totally preventable. Millions of dollars of contaminated peanut products were recalled and destroyed...why not the oral polio vaccine? What a tragedy and injustice.
   Eileen
   
   All that is needed for evil to succeed is that decent human beings do nothing. ~ Edmund Burke
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this