Polio vaccine
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| Vaccine description | |
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| Target disease | Poliomyelitis |
| Type | ? |
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| AHFS/Drugs.com | Multum Consumer Information |
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| Routes of administration |
Parenteral (IPV), By mouth (OPV) |
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| ChemSpider |
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Polio vaccines are vaccines used to prevent poliomyelitis (polio). There are two types: one that uses inactivated poliovirus and is given by injection (IPV), and one that uses weakened poliovirus and is given by mouth (OPV). The World Health Organization recommends all children be vaccinated against polio. The two vaccines have eliminated polio from most of the world, and reduced the number of cases each year from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to 74 in 2015.
The inactivated polio vaccines are very safe. Mild redness or pain may occur at the site of injection. Oral polio vaccines result in vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis in about three per million doses. This compares with one in two hundred who are paralysed following a polio infection. Both are generally safe to give during pregnancy and in those who have HIV/AIDS but are otherwise well.
The first polio vaccine was the inactivated polio vaccine. It was developed by Jonas Salk and came into use in 1955. The oral polio vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin and came into commercial use in 1961. They are on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the most effective and safe medicines needed in a health system. The wholesale cost in the developing world is about 0.25 USD per dose for the oral form as of 2014. In the United States it costs between 25 and 50 USD for the inactivated form.
Interruption of person-to-person transmission of the virus by vaccination is important in the global polio eradication, since there is no long term carrier state for poliovirus in individuals with normal immune function, polio viruses have no non-primate reservoir in nature, and survival of the virus in the environment for an extended period of time appears to be remote.
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