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Saturday, October 15, 2005Although the 1979 outbreak was caused by a strain of the virus found naturally, also known as a wild strain, the polio infection affecting the Amish in Todd County is a strain associated with the oral polio vaccine, which used a weakened live form of the virus. The oral vaccine, which causes cases of polio in rare instances, is no longer used in the United States but is common in developing countries. What concerns public health officials is that the virus strain found in Minnesota has mutated and become more like the wild poliovirus. The mutations make it more transmissible and possibly more likely to cause paralytic disease than ordinary live vaccine-derived strains, according to the Health Department. The question is, how did they get it? We don't use the oral polio vaccine here, although they do use it in third world countries because of its ease of use. The live oral vaccine was discontinued in the United States in an attempt to eliminate vaccine-associated polio cases. Oh, well. What's that they say about the best laid plans? posted by Sydney on 10/15/2005 07:34:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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