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About viruses and viral disease

eradication

World Polio Day

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gold poliovirus
Image credit: Jason Roberts

As a virologist who has worked on poliovirus since 1979, I would be remiss if I did not note that today, 24 October, is World Polio Day. World Polio Day was established by Rotary International over a decade ago to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop a vaccine against poliomyelitis.

The polio eradication effort has made impressive progress towards eliminating polio from the planet. In 1988 it was estimated that there were a total of 350,000 cases of poliomyelitis (probably an underestimate); as of this writing there have been 301 cases in 2013, which is unfortunately already more than in all of 2012 (223). Some setbacks to the program include an outbreak in the Horn of Africa, the finding of wild poliovirus (but no paralytic cases) in Israel, and two suspected cases in Syria. Transmission of wild poliovirus has never been interrupted in three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. The good news is that India remains polio-free, a remarkable achievement.

Currently the eradication effort mainly utilizes the Sabin oral poliovirus vaccine strains (OPV). These vaccines are taken orally and replicate in the intestine, followed by entry into the bloodstream. They induce antiviral immunity in both the intestine and the blood. However, a drawback to using the Sabin vaccines is that the viruses revert to neurovirulence during replication in the intestine. As a consequence, virulent polioviruses are shed in the feces. These can cause poliomyelitis, either in the vaccine recipient or in unimmunized contacts. As wild polioviruses are eliminated, vaccine-derived polioviruses will continue to circulate, necessitating ‘vaccinating against the vaccine’. As a consequence, WHO has proposed a switch to the inactivated poliovirus vaccine, IPV, which if prepared properly cannot cause poliomyelitis.

A very good question is whether the use of IPV can lead to elimination of poliovirus from the planet. Consider the following scenario: at some point in the future the use of Sabin vaccines is discontinued, and all polio immunizations are done with IPV. Vaccine-derived polioviruses will still be present, and possibly also wild polioviruses. As shown by the recent detection of poliovirus in Israel, poliovirus can replicate in the intestines of individuals who have been immunized with IPV. Therefore, in a post-OPV world, immunization with IPV will still allow circulation of vaccine-derived polioviruses. As long as immunization continues at a high rate, there should be no cases of paralytic disease – but we already know that high immunization coverage is difficult to maintain. How long will we need to immunize with IPV before circulation of vaccine-derived polioviruses will stop?

Below are links to resources on polio, provided by David Gold at Global Health Strategies:

  • An expert panel including Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Polio, will discuss the status of eradication today at Rotary International’s ‘Making History‘ event. Help share and watch live at 6:30 PM ET.
  • Look out for A Shot to Save the World, a documentary about Jonas Salk’s vaccine discovery, airing on the Smithsonian Channel today at 8:00 pm ET/PT.
  • President-elect of the Asia Pacific Pediatric Association Naveen Thacker wrote an opinion piece on India’s incredible achievements against polio, and the benefits and lessons India’s experience offers. Help share his piece.
  • Check out a video by footballer Leo Messi (tweet), a blog post by Paralympian polio-survivor Dennis Ogbe (tweet), a Vaccines Today blog post by Ramesh Ferris (tweet) and an Impatient Optimists post on other ways to get involved today.
  • Pakistan: Thanks to the work of heroic vaccinators, Pakistan has eliminated polio from much of the country. This year, 74% of cases, and 93% during the high season, have occurred in one region: the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of northern Pakistan. North Waziristan, in FATA, has been inaccessible since June 2012, and has reported 14 wild polio cases this year in an increasingly severe outbreak. The program is intensifying immunizations in neighboring areas to prevent spread, but continued inaccessibility in this region poses a serious risk to the global effort.
  • Nigeria: Challenges persist in northern Nigeria, particularly in Borno and Kano, but other traditional reservoir areas appear to be largely polio-free — reminders that success is possible. Of particular importance, the northwest of the country, from which polio has historically spread into West Africa, has not had any cases this year. Read and help share a recent Science article (available with free registration) that takes an in-depth look at Nigeria’s eradication efforts.
  • Afghanistan: Afghanistan’s traditionally endemic Southern Region remains polio-free, with all cases this year linked to cross-border transmission with Pakistan. Next month will mark one year since the last case was recorded in the Southern Region.
  • Horn of Africa: GPEI partners responded rapidly to the outbreak, and we’re seeing signs of progress: there have been no confirmed cases in the Banadir region of Somalia, the epicenter of the outbreak, or in Kenya, since August. The number of unimmunized individuals in the region still poses a major risk for further spread. Outbreak response will continue aggressively into 2014.
  • Possible Polio Cases Detected in Syria: Syria reported a cluster of possible polio cases on 17 October that is currently being investigated. The country has been polio-free since 1999, but is considered at high risk for polio due to declining immunization rates. Syria’s Ministry of Health is preparing an urgent response across the country, aiming to conduct the first campaign by the end of October. Supplementary immunization activities are being planned in neighboring countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, southern Turkey and western Iraq. The GPEI has a history of eliminating polio in areas of insecurity. Drawing from past successful efforts in insecure areas, including El Salvador and Angola, the Strategic Plan outlines approaches to eliminating polio in areas of conflict that are informing Syria’s response.
  • IMB Report: The International Monitoring Board (IMB), tasked with assessing the GPEI effort each quarter, met earlier this month to review the program’s progress, challenges and risks in endemic countries, the Horn of Africa and Israel. The IMB’s report from this meeting will be available here on Friday, 25 October

 

Jeffrey Almond on vaccine development

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Dr. Jeffrey Almond began his career as an academic virologist studying influenza virus, then moved to poliovirus. He made major contributions to our understanding of the molecular basis of poliovirus attenuation and reversion to virulence. After 20 years in academics he moved to Sanofi Pasteur, where he is currently Vice President, discovery research and external R&D.

I interviewed Jeffrey Almond, Ph.D., in Manchester UK at the 2013 meeting of the Society for General Microbiology. We spoke about the eradication of poliovirus, challenges in making a universal influenza vaccine, a dengue virus vaccine developed by Sanofi Pasteur, and moving from academia to industry.

 

TWiV 227: Lacks security and bad poultry

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On episode #227 of the science show This Week in Virology, the complete TWiV team reviews the controversial publication of the HeLa cell genome, a missing vial of Guanarito virus in a BSL-4 facility, and human infections with avian influenza H7N9 virus.

You can find TWiV #227 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.

WHO will switch to type 2 inactivated poliovirus vaccine

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Poliovirus by Jason RobertsThe World Health Organization’s campaign to eradicate poliomyelitis made impressive inroads in 2012: only 212 cases were reported, compared with 620 the previous year; moreover, India remained polio-free. The dark side of this story is that as wild polio is eliminated, vaccine-associated poliomyelitis moves in to take its place. The landmark decision by WHO to replace the infectious, type 2 Sabin poliovaccine with inactivated vaccine is an important step towards eliminating vaccine-associated polio.

A known side effect of the Sabin poliovirus vaccines, which are taken orally and replicate in the intestine, is vaccine-associated poliomyelitis. During the years that the Sabin poliovirus vaccines (also called oral poliovirus vaccine, or OPV) were used in the US, cases of poliomyelitis caused by vaccine-derived polioviruses (VDPV) occurred at a rate of about 1 per 1.4 million vaccine doses, or 7-8 per year. Once the disease was eradicated from the US in 1979, the only cases of polio were caused by VDPVs. For this reason the US switched to the Salk inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) in 2000.

The main vaccine used by WHO in the global eradication effort has been a trivalent preparation comprising all three serotypes. When type 2 poliovirus was eradicated in 1999, many countries began immunizing only against types 1 and 3 poliovirus. As a consequence of this immunization strategy, population immunity to type 2 poliovirus declined. This switch, together with poor routine immunization coverage in some areas, has lead to polio outbreaks caused by cVDPV2 in countries such as Pakistan.

Alan Dove and I suggested in 1997 that it would be necessary to switch from OPV to IPV to achieve polio eradication. However, WHO did not agree with our position:

Dove and Racaniello believe that the reliance of the WHO on the live Sabin oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) means that there will be a continuing threat of release of potentially pathogenic virus into the environment. They therefore recommend a switch to the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). In response, Hull and Aylward explain why a switch from OPV is not necessary and describe the studies being sponsored by the WHO to determine how and when immunization can safely be ended.

I remember well the words of DA Henderson, the architect of smallpox eradication, when I proposed a switch to IPV at a conference in 2001:

There is no way it is going to come about and as an end-game strategy it is dreaming to believe that this is reasonable. So, it is just not on.

Apparently I was not dreaming: in May 2012 the 65th World Health Assembly requested that the Director-General “coordinate with all relevant partners, including vaccine manufacturers, to promote the research, production and supply of vaccines, in particular inactivated polio vaccines, in order to enhance their affordability, effectiveness and accessibility”. Later last year the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on immunization (SAGE) called for a global switch from trivalent to bivalent OPV, eliminating the type 2 component. To ensure that circulating type 2 VDPVs do not pose a threat, SAGE also recommended that all countries introduce at least one dose of inactivated poliovaccine. This decision was announced in the 4 January 2013 Weekly Epidemiological Record (pdf).

The fact that WHO believes it is necessary to switch from type 2 OPV to IPV surely means that in the future, when types 1 and 3 polioviruses are eradicated, types 1 and 3 OPV will be replaced with IPV. This is the correct endgame strategy for eradicating polio. Once circulating VDPVs are no longer detectable on the planet – something that will probably not happen before 2020 – then we may safely stop immunization with IPV.

Poliovirus image courtesy of Jason Roberts.

Vaccine-associated poliomyelitis in Pakistan

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Poliovirus by Jason RobertsAn outbreak of ten cases of poliomyelitis caused by circulating vaccine-derivied poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) is ongoing in Pakistan, centered in the Kila Abdulla/Pishin area of Baluchistan. The same virus strain has spread to the neighboring Kandahar province in Afghanistan, where two paralytic cases have been reported. Vaccine-derived poliomyelitis is a well-known consequence of immunization with the Sabin poliovirus vaccine.

There are three serotypes of poliovirus, each of which causes poliomyelitis. The three vaccine strains developed by Albert Sabin (OPV, oral poliovirus vaccine) contain mutations which prevent them from causing paralytic disease. When the vaccine is taken orally, the viruses replicate in the intestine, and immunity to infection develops. While replicating in the intestinal tract, the vaccine viruses undergo genetic changes. As a consequence, the OPV recipients excrete neurovirulent polioviruses. These so-called vaccine-derived polioviruses (VDPV) can cause poliomyelitis in the recipient of the vaccine or in a contact. During the years that the Sabin poliovirus vaccines were used in the US, cases of poliomyelitis caused by VDPV occurred at a rate of about 1 per 1.4 million vaccine doses, or 7-8 per year. Once the disease was eradicated from the US in 1979, the only cases of polio were caused by VDPVs. For this reason the US switched to the Salk (inactivated) poliovirus vaccine in 2000.

Because VDPVs are excreted in the feces, they can spread in communities. These circulating VDPVs, or cVDPVs, can cause outbreaks of poliomyelitis in under-immunized populations. Examples include outbreaks of poliomyelitis in an Amish community and in Nigeria in 2009 caused by cVDPV2. Nigeria employed trivalent OPV before 2003, the year that this country began a boycott of polio immunization. Because type 2 poliovirus had been eradicated from the globe in 1999, when immunization in Nigeria resumed in 2004, monovalent types 1 and 3 vaccine were used. The source of the VDPV type 2 in Nigeria was the trivalent vaccine used before 2003.

For many years the vaccine used by WHO in the global eradication effort was a trivalent preparation comprising all three serotypes. When type 2 poliovirus was eliminated, many countries began immunizing only against types 1 and 3 poliovirus. As a consequence of this immunization strategy, population immunity to type 2 poliovirus declined. This has likely lead to the emergence of cVDPV2 in Pakistan, together with poor routine immunization coverage.

The resurrection of poliovirus type 2 highlights the difficulties in eradicating a pathogen using a vaccine that can readily mutate to cause the disease that it is designed to prevent. As wild type polioviruses are eliminated, the only remaining polio will be caused by the vaccine. If immunization is then stopped, as planned by WHO, there will likely be outbreaks of polio caused by cVDPV of all three serotypes. The solution to this conundrum is to switch to the inactivated vaccine until cVDPVs disappear from the planet.

Exacerbating the polio situation in Pakistan was the murder in the past week of nine immunization workers in several provinces. The Taliban, which carried out the executions, accused them of being spies. This accusation originates from the CIA operation in 2011 in which a Pakistani doctor ran an immunization program in Abbottabad in an attempt to obtain DNA samples from the Bin Laden family. As a result of this violence, immunization campaigns in Balochistan have been suspended. Coupled with the previous refusal of many parents to have their children immunized, this action makes it likely that poliovirus will spread more extensively in the country, making eradication even more difficult.

Poliovirus image courtesy of Jason Roberts.

Virology class at Montana State University

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In August this year I received the following note from Michele Hardy, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Montana State University:

I’m writing to ask if you’d be willing to participate in my  undergraduate/graduate virology course this fall.   We have several guests per semester that we Skype in to talk with students.  I was thinking of you as a guest to talk with them about poliovirus, but also about your role in TWiV.  It’s not a lecture format, instead teams of students will research your work and come up with a set of questions that we would provide to you in advance.  In the past they’ve asked specifically about research areas, but also are really interested in what people’s backgrounds are, how they got to be where they are now, etc. We give them pretty much free reign to ask whatever they want to, whether it’s virus-specific or not.  Our goal is to get them excited about virology and so we don’t put restrictions on what they’re allowed to talk about.  Sometimes they stick to the questions they submit, others they take whatever direction the discussion goes.  There are ~60 students, 8-10 of them are graduate students.  We encourage them to listen to TWiV a few times a semester so I think they’ll be excited to talk with you.  Thanks for considering this, I look forward to hearing from you.

This past Monday I joined the class via Skype. The questions ranged from how I became interested in and use social media, to polio eradication. Listen to our conversation by clicking the arrow below.

[powerpress url=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/twiv_audio/Hardy_virology_class.mp3″]

Click arrow to play | Download (35 MB .mp3, 48 min)

Update: Received a nice thank you card from the class:

Bozeman class 2012