By the way, the Chief Sanitary Inspector, national consultant in the field of infectious diseases and national consultant in the field of epidemiology published a joint communique in which they emphasize that there are no effective drugs against the poliomyelitis virus and treatment is only symptomatic. They also emphasize that in order to prevent the spread of the virus, at least 95% of level of vaccination of children and adolescents.
Interestingly, However, few people realize that the discoverer and creator of the world’s first effective vaccine against the polio virus was a Pole, Hilary Koprowski. His achievement has become a permanent mark in the history of medicine, because although nowadays polio (also called simply polio or acute infantile paralysis) is rare, especially in developed countries, it was not always like that. There are many indications that humanity has faced it since ancient times, there is no shortage of Egyptian paintings and sculptures depicting adults with limp limbs or children walking with a cane – these are symptoms typical of paralytic polio.
And what disease are we talking about anyway? Heine-Medina disease is a viral infectious disease caused by the poliovirus, which is transmitted via the fecal-oral route.. It attacks the lymph nodes and circulatory system, and the course of the disease varies from mild to fatal. However, the most characteristic form is the paralytic form mentioned above, developing in approximately 0.1%. patients, which is usually characterized by asymmetric flaccid paralysis.
We know of three serotypes of poliovirus – type 1 (PV1), type 2 (PV2) and type III (PV3), all of which are highly virulent and cause the same severe symptoms of the disease, but the most common and most strongly associated with paralysis strain is PV1. And unfortunately it is it is the only one of the three existing strains of polio that is not globally eradicated and is endemic, among others in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The clinical description of the disease appeared in 1789 and we owe it to the English physician Michael Underwood, but the most common name of the disease was created after the names of Jakob Heine and Karl Oskar Medina, who researched this disease in 1840 and 1890, respectively. Scientists suggest that until the 19th century, polio occurred sporadically and only later did we experience a real pandemic, which covered mainly the northern hemisphere.
Pandemic and global eradication program
And it was a serious burden for society, because caused thousands of deaths and several thousand cases of permanent disability in school-age children around the world every year. Everything changed with vaccinations and the World Poliomyelitis Eradication Program, which has been running since 1988, under which mass vaccination campaigns are organized in countries with weaker infrastructure and vaccinations are continued in all countries in the world where the disease has already been eliminated.
Like Poland, because in our country vaccinations against polio have been carried out since the 1950s, thanks to which the number of cases has decreased by 99%. Since 1984, no cases of wild poliovirus have been reported in our country, but due to the possibility of infection with the virus from traveler countries, all children are vaccinated against polio.
The first effective polio vaccines
However, few people realize that this would not be possible without a Polish virologist and immunologist, academic teacher, author or co-author of over 875 scientific papers, associate professor at Thomas Jefferson University and member of the Polish Academy of Sciences… Hilary Koprowski, who discovered the first effective vaccine against the polio virus.
After many tests of the virus, he found a host (bristle cottontail) in which the virus multiplies in natural conditions, but does not cause disease, and from which the virus emerges weakened, with reduced virulence, which allowed us to fight this strong opponent. Koprowski’s method involved attenuating the polio virus, i.e. modifying it to obtain a variant with significantly reduced virulence while maintaining the immunological effect on the body. Process it started with injecting healthy cottontails with live poliovirus, then brain samples were taken from them and injected into healthy animals.
What do polio and the bristle cottontail have in common?
After a dozen or so such cycles, it was possible to obtain a live but weakened polio virus that was unable to cause disease in humans, but made them resistant to the virus that causes Heine-Medina disease. Koprowski first administered the vaccine to himself in 1948, and then on February 27, 1950 to an 8-year-old boy living in Letchworth Villagea center for people with physical and mental disabilities based in New York.
When the child showed no side effects, Koprowski expanded his experiment to 19 other children. A total of seventeen of them developed antibodies against the polio virus (the remaining three probably already had them) and none of the children experienced any complications. The first mass vaccinations were carried out in 1958 in Congo, where the great advantage of this vaccine was revealed, namely it was administered orally, and a quarter of a million children were vaccinated in just six weeks!
Within 10 years, the vaccine was used on four continentsbut ironically, although the vaccine was developed by a Pole, administering it to children in our country was not that easy, especially since Hilary Koprowski had been living and working outside his homeland since 1939, so his discovery “supplied” the American market. Nevertheless, he used his contacts at the pharmaceutical company Wyeth to enable the National Institute of Hygiene in Warsaw to obtain nine million doses of the vaccine. Thanks to this, the polio epidemic that had been ongoing in Poland since 1951 was stopped, and thanks to vaccinations carried out since the autumn of 1958, the number of cases dropped from thousands to several dozen cases a year, and deaths from hundreds to just a few.
Over time Koprowski’s vaccine was replaced by Albert Sabin’s vaccine, and currently the Salk vaccine is still used. Interestingly, however, the former’s early work on a polio vaccine was based on an attenuated virus that Sabin received from Koprowski.
In short, the Pole’s achievement cannot be overestimated, which is also confirmed by numerous awards, such as: Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for outstanding contributions in scientific and charitable activities for the good of the society of the Republic of Poland or the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the Officer’s Cross of this Order, as well as the Order of the White Eagle, awarded posthumously.
Source: geekweek.interia.pl
