• Earliest depictions from Egypt 1350
• 1789 first clinical description by British physician
• 1908 Karl Landsteiner determines viral cause vs. bacterial
• 1921 FDR contracts the disease

Poliovirus

• Member of enterovirus family
    - Picornaviridae
    - Humans only known reservoir
• Three serotypes
    - Minimal heterotypic immunity
• Enters through the mouth and sheds in stool
      for several weeks
• Hematologic spread to central nervous system
• Only 1% of all polio infections result in paralysis

Polio in the US

• First outbreak 1843
• 1916 NY epidemic accelerates research
• 1937 vaccine trials via nasal route fail
• 1938 March of Dimes
    - National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis
    - 2,800,000 Dimes in FDR’s name
• 1948 Weller and Robbins grow poliovirus in live cells--Nobel Prize
• 1954 First successful vaccine against polio developed by Jonas Salk

Polio Statistics

• 1952-US 21,000 cases of paralysis
• 1979-Last case of wild-virus acquired polio in US
• Vanquished from western hemisphere in 1991
• 1997-Western Pacific polio free
• 2002-European region polio free
• Only 7 countries remain endemic