The certification of poliomyelitis eradication in Europe will eventually require that countries demonstrate there is a minimal risk of wild poliovirus reintroduction and sustained transmission through unimmunized subpopulations such as ethnic minorities. A serologic survey among a Gypsy community in Italy found that despite only 26% documented immunization coverage, serum neutralizing antibodie...

The world is now in the 24 year of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Halfway through that initiative in 2000, the island of Hispaniola saw an outbreak of vaccine derived poliovirus [1]. The implications of this outbreak and multiple subsequent isolations of Sabin strains that are estimated to have circulated in communities for a year or more are now causing a reconsideration of the optim...

In January 1997, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended adoption of a sequential inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV)-oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) vaccination schedule. The schedule of injections of IPV at 2 months and 4 months of age, followed by OPV at 12-18 months and again at 4-6 years was intended to minimize the risk for vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyel...

Mutations in the predicted C'-C"-D edge of the first immunoglobulin-like domain of the poliovirus receptor were previously shown to eliminate poliovirus binding. To identify capsid residues that expand receptor recognition, 16 poliovirus suppressor mutants were selected that replicate in three different mutant receptor-expressing cell lines as well as in cells expressing the wild-type receptor....

A single-tube, single-primer-set reverse transcription-PCR assay was developed for the rapid detection of polioviruses in infected tissue culture fluids and clinical materials. The poliovirus-specific PCR primers are located in the VP1-2A region of the poliovirus genome. They generate a 290-bp product and can be used in duplex reactions with general enterovirus primers. The primers span the reg...

The replication of poliovirus RNA genomes containing amber mutations was studied to test whether viral proteins provided in trans could rescue the replication of an RNA genome that could not be completely translated itself. Mutants containing amber codons at different positions in the genome displayed vastly different abilities to be rescued by wild-type proteins provided by a helper genome. Am...

BACKGROUND Israel has >95% polio vaccine coverage with the last 9 birth cohorts immunized exclusively with inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). Using acute flaccid paralysis and routine, monthly countrywide environmental surveillance, no wild poliovirus circulation was detected between 1989 and February 2013, after which wild type 1 polioviruses South Asia genotype (WPV1-SOAS) have persistently cir...

In 1988, the World Health Assembly resolved to eradicate poliomyelitis (polio). Since then, wild poliovirus (WPV) cases have declined by >99.9%, from an estimated 350,000 cases of polio each year to 74 cases in two countries in 2015 (1). This decrease was achieved primarily through the use of trivalent oral poliovirus vaccine (tOPV), which contains types 1, 2, and 3 live, attenuated polioviruse...

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Poliomyelitis—Madagascar 2002. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2002;51:622. 2. Guillot S, Caro V, Cuervo N, Korotkova E, Combiescu M, Persu A, et al.] Natural genetic exchanges between vaccine and wild poliovirus strains in humans. J Virol 2000;74:8434–43. 3. Pringle CR. Virus taxonomy at the XIth International Congress of Virology, Sydney, Australia, 19...