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Mutated polio virus can resist vaccination
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A mutated poliovirus was able to resist the protection of vaccination in victims of a large outbreak in the Congo in 2010, researchers from Germany reported.
During the outbreak, which occurred in Pointe Noire, Republic of the Congo, there were 445 confirmed cases of infection — mostly young adults — and 209 deaths. The 47% case-fatality rate was attributed to low immunization coverage, but surveys indicated that approximately half of the victims remembered receiving the full, three-dose polio vaccination series.
“We isolated polio viruses from the deceased and examined the viruses more closely,” Jan Felix Drexler, MD, of the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, said in a press release. Drexler conducted the study while working at the University of Bonn. “The pathogen carries a mutation that changes its form at a decisive point.”
Drexler and colleagues isolated the wild poliovirus strain from several fatal cases, termed PV1-RC2010, and tested the pathogen in the blood samples of 34 medical students at the University of Bonn. Each student was routinely vaccinated in childhood. Results of the analysis indicated that neutralizing antibody titers against PV1-RC2010 were significantly lower than those against several vaccine-derived strains, including Sabin-1.
According to the researchers, the same pathogen could potentially have affected numerous people in Germany.
Between 15% and 29% of the medical students were unprotected against the mutated virus, despite being vaccinated against Sabin-1.
“We estimate that one in five of our Bonn test subjects could have been infected by the new polio virus, perhaps even one in three,” study researcher Christian Drosten, MD, of the Institute of Virology at the University of Bonn Medical Center, said in the release.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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