Briton ‘spread polio virus for 30 years’

A BRITISH man with a rare immunity disorder could have been unwittingly spreading the polio virus for almost 30 years as a result of childhood vaccination, scientists have found.

The discovery has implications for the eradication of polio, which only remains in three countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Other patients with the same ability to shed vaccine-derived polio virus could trigger new outbreaks of the disease, researchers said.

A team led by Dr Javier Martin, from the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, wrote in the journal Public Library of Science Pathogens that the man had a full course of polio vaccinations as a child, which included doses of weakened live virus.

He was later diagnosed with a condition affecting his immune system’s ability to kill viruses in the gut. His stool samples contained high levels of polio virus, which had mutated and was no longer a weakened version.

Luckily, it did not infect people with healthy immune systems who had been immunised against polio.

Polio strains have recently been isolated from sewage samples in Slovakia, Finland, Estonia and Israel bearing the fingerprints of vaccine-derived polio viruses from immunodeficient individuals, the scientists said.

They called for enhanced surveillance to manage the possible risks of such strains spreading.