Markus Spiske via Unsplash
There was once a time when polio raged like a wildfire through the U.S.. Outbreaks of the disease resulted in thousands of deaths and left tens of thousands of survivors with mild to severe paralysis. It wasn’t until the early 1950s that Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine. Over the next few years, hundreds of millions of doses were administered throughout the U.S. and, eventually, the world.
While we haven’t seen polio rise to the disastrous levels of the past, a version of the poliovirus called Wild poliovirus (WPV) type 1 is still endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On top of that, there are WPV types that have evolved from the vaccine and circulated in human populations.
“Improving vaccines that are proven to prevent disease and stop pathogen transmission, is less glamorous than developing new vaccines, but perhaps more important,” Raul Andino, a virologist at the University of California in Berkeley, told The Daily Beast in an email. He added, “We think that the technical improvements can help to control poliomyelitis and poliovirus epidemics in the long run.”