News Brief by Lushna Mehra
New
technologies have allowed for the creation of an easily accessible and usable
vaccine to get rid of polio. Polio
became extremely prevalent in the 1940s and 50s when 35,000 people were said to
have been disabled annually because of it.
Two major vaccinations were used around that time: the Salk and the
Sabin. The former injected the recipient
with a “dead” virus, while the latter was an oral vaccine with a weakened
version of live polio. The Sabin vaccine was
especially helpful in increasing people’s immunity, though presently the U.S.
uses a vaccine similar to the Salk.
In typical
cases of polio, people have few to minor symptoms like limb pain, fatigue, and
nausea in 4 to 8% of cases. Additionally, less than 1% of the cases lead to permanent paralysis,
which often occurs in the legs but sometimes may occur in the respiratory
system as well. The major way in which
polio spreads is from person-to-person contact, including coughing, sneezing,
or fecal contamination. The virus can
last for seconds in the air, hours on a surface, and weeks in fecal
matter. Though polio was declared decimated in the U.S. in 1979, researchers want to protect the entire human population. Smallpox is a similar virus and it is the only
infectious disease that humans have gotten rid of, and many hope to do the same
to polio.
The newly
created vaccine for polio involves a patch similar to an adhesive bandage. This patch contains microneedles with the
vaccine in it, and the vaccine is delivered to the body when the patch is put
on the skin and pressed on. This combats
the challenge of limited resources and ability to transport them since the microneedle
patch does not require professionals to administer it and is easily
transportable to those in need of it.
Microneedle patches may therefore be the future to restrict and to
potentially eradicate polio.
Strickland, Ashley. "60 Years after a Vaccine, New
Technology May Finally Eradicate Polio." CNN. N.p., 10 Apr. 2015. Web.
18 Apr. 2015.
.
Posts
