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'Milestone' in polio eradication achieved
The second of three forms of the polio virus has been eradicated, experts have announced.
There are three types of the wild polio virus, which, while scientifically different, cause the same symptoms, including paralysis or even death,
The world was declared free of type 2 four years ago - and now the World Health Organization has said type 3 has also been eradicated.
But type 1 is still circulating in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
See also:
Two Strains of Polio Are Gone, but the End of the Disease Is Still Far Off
Related:
'What the hell is going on?' Polio Cases are Vanishing in Pakistan, Yet the Virus Won't go Away
Polio Outbreak in Papua New Guinea
The End Of Guinea Worm Was Just Around the Corner. Not Anymore
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday October 25 2019, @05:03AM (12 children)
If they manage to eradicate all polio, will childhood vaccination stop, eventually? The risks of re-emergence vs. rare side effects must be hard to estimate.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @07:09AM
Yes, it will eventually stop. Poliovirus does not have any known animal reserviors and no recorded zoonotic cases, even with other primates and domesticated animals. This means that the OPV can be discontinued once active cases of polio cease in an area in favor of IPV-only and sanitation monitoring (as is the case in every country I checked in the Americas and Europe). This will drastically reduce the cases of cVDPV because those are only caused by the OPV. They will then have to wait until there are at least 5 years or so from the last given dose of OPV or positive case (whichever is later) to start the process to declare cVDPVs to be officially eradicated after all the sanitation cases come back clear for that period of time. There will be one last round of herd-immunity boosting to use up old supplies, and then that's it. My guess is that they will probably do risk-based immunization for awhile for travelers to and residents of high-risk areas, but, given enough time, those will stop too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @11:29AM
Thanks for that insight, Jenny.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @12:20PM
Have you vaccinated your kid against smallpox lately?
No, you haven't.
The answer to your question is, yes, they will eventually stop vaccinations as there IS risk with them, it is just that the risks of polio are so much worse.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Friday October 25 2019, @03:30PM (7 children)
Once a disease is truly eradicated, the risk of re-emergence is the same as the risk of the re-emergence of dodos or dinosaurs. Extinct species don't spontaneously come back from the dead. When's the last time you were vaccinated against smallpox?
Of course, a lot of diseases can also survive in animals - those are pretty much impossible to eradicate because nobody is going to hunt through the jungle immunizing every mouse, monkey, bird, or whatever else it can survive in, and so the disease will inevitably be reintroduced to the human population.
Some diseases can also survive indefinitely as spores, laying inert in the soil for months or decades until wind, water, etc. carries them into a human where they can resuscitate themselves and start colonizing.
Generally speaking though - we don't try to eradicate those diseases. It's pretty obvious it'll be a lost cause from the beginning, so resources are focused on diseases we can eradicate.
Of course, we don't typically actually try to drive a disease to extinction - smallpox is still alive and well in various medical/military research labs, and if it ever gets out then we'd have to start vaccinating again.
(Score: 1) by Jay on Friday October 25 2019, @05:48PM (2 children)
The Guinea worm is a great example. We thought we had it eradicated, but then it turned out that wild dogs can harbor it. Until that was discovered, it was confusingly hard to eradicate. Now it looks like an attempt to eradicate it in wild dogs will need to happen, while working to keep it in check in the human populations that might come into contact with them.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday October 25 2019, @06:41PM
A good point - we don't necessarily know that animal reservoirs exist until we've nearly eliminated a disease in people. At least on a regional basis - you'll probably discover the animal reservoirs in the first regions to "eradicate" a disease long before you get anywhere close to eradicating it globally.
Sounds like it's even worse than that for the Guinea worm - frogs can be infected as well. And if they can survive in humans, dogs, and frogs, then I would guess there's probably a host of other species they can survive in as well. Parasites are definitely their own special class of infections.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday October 26 2019, @07:13AM
And that's the problem, even though we think we've eradicated something, the anti-vaxxers will do their damndest to make sure it comes back. Or, better yet, never gets eradicated in the first place.
You have to wonder whether there's some sort of symbiosis there. Deadly disease X doesn't have to evolve to become vaccine-resistant, it just has to wait for humans to devolve to become vaccine-resistant.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 25 2019, @11:10PM (3 children)
You won't need lab stockpiles for reemergence in the future:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Post-eradication [wikipedia.org]
Fast forward a couple of decades, and if the genome sequence or a similar genome sequence is available, it could be recreated. Probably with less money, people, and expertise.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 25 2019, @11:19PM
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/GenomesGroup.cgi?taxid=10240 [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?lvl=0&id=10255 [nih.gov]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday October 26 2019, @12:29AM (1 child)
True, with the huge benefit that you could then make a much stronger argument for eradicating the lab stockpiles, and drastically reduce the chance of accidental outbreak.It makes it increasingly easy to weponize it of course but there's way better things to weaponize - I mean we know how to make the flu more contagious and 100% lethal(at least in rats)
At least for viruses-based diseases. I'm pretty sure you need only infect a suitable host cell with viral DNA to get new viruses. Bacteria are a lot less straightforward, to say nothing of parasites. The best you could do with them is some sort of DNA-transplant hybrid into some related organisms cells. Maybe the DNA would totally suborn the cell, but we really have no idea just how much evolutionary information might be encoded in the internal mechanisms of the cell.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:55AM
Maybe we could make the opposite argument. If digital sequences can be used to recreate any disease, we should have the CDC continuously studying the real thing and working on developing new vaccines. Accidents can happen but the people doing that work are closely monitored to say the least. And you could use more robotic arms and stuff that wasn't available during the Cold War.
Parasites are obviously (?) a no-go for would-be bioturrists, but I'm feeling good about bacteria. Maybe have it infect a human-on-a-chip or something for testing, and self-infection for deployment.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday October 25 2019, @08:34PM
But what they should do immediately is start giving the Salk vaccine a couple of years before the Sabine vaccine. The Salk vaccine has no possibility of causing a temporary mild case of polio, and, IIRC the Sabine vaccine (sugar cube) does. But the Sabine vaccine give a permanent immunity, where the Salk vaccine only lasts for (IIRC) around 7 years. So give the Salk vaccine first to develop a temporary immunity, and when that's well established give the Sabine vaccine to make it permanent.
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