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London Children Aged 1 To 9 Offered Polio Booster Vaccine As More Virus Found In Sewage

LONDON — The U.K. Is offering all children aged 1 to 9 a booster dose of the polio vaccine after further poliovirus has been found in sewage in the capital.

The committee advising the British government on vaccination has recommended that a booster dose be offered to children of those ages in all London boroughs. The government on Wednesday accepted the advice and the National Health Service will start contacting parents and guardians.

"I recognise parents and guardians will be concerned about the detection of polio in London, however I want to reassure people that nobody has been diagnosed with the virus and the risk to the wider population is low," said Health Secretary Steve Barclay.

In recent months, cases of vaccine-derived polio have been detected in the U.S. And Israel.

The poliovirus that has been found in sewage in the boroughs of Barnet, Brent, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Waltham Forest is not wild virus but derived from the vaccine. It occurs if the weakened live virus in oral polio vaccines — which does not cause polio in the recipient, and is shed by vaccinated kids through their digestive system — circulates in under-vaccinated communities long enough for it to mutate into a version that resembles wild polio, regaining the ability to paralyze.

The U.K. Health Security Agency said today that, across London, childhood vaccination uptake is lower than in the rest of the country and that offering a booster dose to children will "ensure a high level of protection from paralysis and help reduce further spread of the virus."

The level of poliovirus found, as well as the genetic diversity among the samples, suggests that there is a level of virus transmission in the areas where it's been found, said the agency, indicating that "transmission has gone beyond a close network of a few individuals." However, the agency said that the risk remains low to the national population as most people were protected through vaccination.

Countries like the U.S. And Belgium already offer a booster dose of the vaccine to prevent polio as part of their ordinary childhood vaccination schedule.

In July, New York confirmed the U.S.' first case of polio nearly a decade with the health department urging unvaccinated people to get a jab. Like the sewage samples in the U.K., the U.S. Case was also indicative of transmission from someone who received the oral polio vaccine. That vaccine is no longer used in the U.S. And hasn't been used in the U.K. Since 2004.

However, the oral vaccine is still used in some countries, particularly to respond to polio outbreaks. People can shed the vaccine virus in their feces for several weeks with vaccine viruses spreading in under-vaccinated communities through poor hand hygiene or water and food contamination.

In March, the World Health Organization was also notified of vaccine-derived poliovirus in Israel, with pediatric paralysis being detected in a child. Several other asymptomatic children in the country also tested positive for polio. Since the spate of cases, Israel has rolled out a vaccination campaign to ensure those under 18 are fully vaccinated.

Wild polio cases have decreased by more than 99 percent since 1988, according to the WHO. Currently, wild poliovirus affects Pakistan and Afghanistan.

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A version of this article appears in the April 4, 1953 issue of Science News.

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Plants Have Been "Hijacked" To Create A Vaccine — And It Could Eradicate Polio

Polio's Last Days?

Polio cases have decreased by over 99% since 1988, but a recent breakthrough could lead to this disease's elimination once and for all.

In an interesting way of using one virus to combat another, scientists at the John Innes Centre in Norfolk, England, "hijacked" a relative of the tobacco plant, and used its own metabolism to turn its leaves into the leafy equivalent of polio vaccine factories. The end result is a virus that looks and acts like the polio virus, but technically isn't; it has everything needed to train the body's immune system, but nothing that can pass on the polio virus — which can cause an infected person to eventually become paralyzed or suffer from meningitis.

Scientists began this process by taking the genetic code used to make the outer layer of the polio virus, and combining it with material from various other virus known to effectively infect plants. From there, the resulting combination was inserted into soil bacteria, which then went on to infect tobacco. After the infection took hold, the plants responded to the newly made genetic code and began making the virus-like particles that would later be extracted.

When used in preliminary animal tests, the particles completed prevented polio from occurring.

Speaking to BBC News, John Innes Professor George Lomonossoff called the particles "incredibly good mimics."

A = Virus-like particles (VLPs) in vitreous ice. B = Reconstruction of poliovirus. C = VLP showing empty internal surface. D and E = Resolutions of poliovirus. (Image Credit: John Innes Center) A Replacement for the Polio Vaccine

The World Health Organization (WHO) has already provided funding towards this research, with the goal of using it to replace the polio vaccine still in use. Current polio vaccines utilize the actual polio virus, albeit a much subdued version; however, that poses a few risks, included its potential reintroduction into society.

The virus-like particles, and the process in which they were created, also aren't exclusive to polio. There are plans to expand it to treat many other diseases, such as the flu, as well as outbreaks of new diseases. In theory, so long as the genetic code is available, as it was with polio, then a vaccine can be made.

"In an experiment with a Canadian company, they showed you could actually identify a new strain of virus and produce a candidate vaccine in three to four weeks," Lomonossoff told the BBC. "It has potential for making vaccines against emerging epidemics, of course recently we had Zika and prior to that we had Ebola."

Tinkering with plant machinery could also potentially yield other useful results, including clean fuel for our vehicles and compounds to fight diseases.

While Lomonossoff's unique process provides a cheaper, more efficient way to make vaccines, there are still aspects to work out before its fully implemented; for example, whether using a tobacco plant will lead to a vaccine with nicotine in it, and in turn, create a nicotine craving.

Polio currently affects very few people — 37 cases were reported in 2016 — but the disease is so infectious that even a single case could be disastrous; that one case could lead to 200,000 new cases every year within ten years. What is perhaps scariest about it is those infected may not even be aware of it; its symptoms include a sore throat, headache, or a fever, all of which are fairly common among less dangerous diseases.

The WHO estimates that, thanks to the global push to eradicate polio, more than 16 million people have been saved from paralysis. If there's a way to eradicate it completely, it's worth it.

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