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Top 10 Facts about the History of the Polio Vaccine

Poliomyelitis commonly known as Poli is a highly infectious virus that mostly affects children. Polio was once the leading cause of paralysis among children around the globe. This shows the severity of the viral disease. The existence of olio can be dated back to pre-historic times when there are pictures of ancient Egyptian times that show children walking with canes because their limbs were withered because of polio.

Therefore, this article will delve into some facts about the polio vaccine that has been instrumental in ensuring that child paralysis caused by the disease is reduced and children can lead a happy and fulfilling life. The article will also be great in providing the reader with knowledge about the disease so that they can stay informed and thus be able to monitor current trends and appreciate the steps made in that particular field.

1 The disease was first described by Michael Underwood

Michael Underwood was the first doctor to give a clinical description of polio in 1789. This is shocking as the disease had been affecting children for a millennium and yet there had been no steps taken towards knowing what the disease was and how it could be prevented. It was not until 1840 that the viral disease was formally recognized as a condition by Jakob Heine who was a German physician.

The most dreaded illness in the globe during the late 19th and early 20th century was polio due to recurrent epidemics. Over 2000 people perished in a significant outbreak in New York City in 1916, and more than 3000 perished in the biggest outbreak ever to occur in the US, which occurred in 1952.

Even those who survived the illness were left with lifelong effects. They required wheelchairs, crutches, or leg braces due to their deformed limbs, and some also required breathing apparatuses like the iron lung, an artificial respirator developed for the treatment of polio sufferers.

2 Steps towards a vaccine were seen in 1949

The successful cultivation of the polio virus in human tissue by John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins in 1949 at Boston Children’s Hospital was a major advance. The Nobel Prize in 1954 honoured their groundbreaking efforts. This was a good step forward because by the mid-20^th century the viral disease had either killed or paralysed more than half a million victims in a year and thus urgent intervention was needed to mitigate the risks.

3 The March of Dimes

When entertainer Eddie Cantor suggested on the radio that people send dimes to President Roosevelt at the White House to help fight polio, a massive fundraising effort was launched. Within a few weeks, people had sent the President 2,680,000 dimes.

Other celebrities, as well as grassroots organizers, joined the campaign. The “March of Dimes” raised tens of millions of dollars over the years, much of which went toward the effort to find a vaccine.

4 Kolmer’s vaccine

Dr John Kolmer worked with the Research Institute of Cutaneous Medicine which was located in Philadelphia to look into developing a polio vaccine. He began the development of his vaccine in 1932. The project aimed to produce a live virus vaccine as its success had been witnessed when rabies vaccines were developed. Kolmer started testing the vaccine on monkeys before proceeding to test it on himself and then sent them to doctors.  The results of his vaccine took a long because he did not indicate if he monitored the vaccination program.

5 Brodie’s vaccine

At the time that Kolmer was conducting trials to develop a polio vaccine, Maurice Brodie had teamed up with Dr William Park at the New York City Health Department where they worked on creating the vaccine. In 1934, Brodie published the first article describing his successful induction of immunity to polio in three monkeys by administering inactivated poliovirus.

Brodie’s process also began by grinding the spinal cords of infectious monkeys and then treating the cords with various germicides, ultimately finding that formaldehyde was the most effective. By June 1, 1934, Brodie was able to publish his first scholarly article describing his successful induction of immunity in three monkeys with inactivated poliovirus. Through the continued study on an additional 26 monkeys, Brodie ultimately concluded that administration of live virus vaccine tended to result in humoral immunity while administration of killed virus vaccine tended to result in tissue immunity

 6 The first successful vaccine was created in 1955

The first effective vaccine was developed by US doctor Jonas Salk in the early 1950s, not long after the polio virus was grown on human tissue. In 1953, Salk tested his experimental killed-virus vaccine on himself and his family before exposing 1.6 million kids in the USA, Canada, and Finland to it the following year.

On April 12, 1955, Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) received its licence. The results were also released on that day. Annual cases decreased from 58 000 in 1957 to 5600 in 1961, leaving only 161 cases of polio infections.

7 Salk wanted everyone to access the vaccine

Salk was dedicated to ensuring that everyone had access to his vaccine and realised that extermination campaigns would fail without widespread, low- or no-cost immunisation.

Salk did not profit from sharing the formulation or production methods, and six pharmaceutical companies were granted licences to create IPV. When asked who owned the IPV patent in a 1955 interview, he responded, “Well, I would say the people. No patent is available. Could the sun be patented?

8 Another type of polio vaccine was developed

Doctor and microbiologist Albert Sabin created the oral polio vaccine (OPV), a different type of polio vaccination. The virus used in Sabin’s vaccine was in weakened form meaning it could be administered orally, as drops, or as a sugar cube. However, the Salk vaccination had become widely used by the late 1950s, thus there was little interest in studying this novel type of vaccine in the United States.

Similar to Salk, Sabin tested his novel vaccine on his own family and himself, but he had to travel further for larger-scale studies.

9 Trials for Sabin’s vaccine were carried out in the Soviet Union

A team of Russian virologists visited Sabin at his lab in 1956. He began a lengthy partnership with Mikhail P. Chumakov, who was also in charge of the Salk vaccination tests in the Soviet Union. Chumakov tested the live-attenuated vaccine initially using a seed virus that Sabin had supplied.

The vaccine’s safety and efficacy were demonstrated in trials conducted in the Soviet Union on 20 000 children in 1958 and on 10 million children in 1959, as well as in Czechoslovakia on more than 110 000 children between 1958 and 1959.

10 Sabin’s polio vaccine was licensed in 1963

The Surgeon General of the United States recommended that Albert Sabin’s live poliovirus vaccine be licensed. This vaccine is protected against Type 1 poliovirus. Vaccines for Types 2 and 3 would be available soon. All three types would be combined in a 1963 vaccine.