ENTEROVIRUS SURVEILLANCE FOLLOWING A COMMUNITYWIDE ORAL POLIOVIRUS VACCINATION PROGRAM: A SEVEN-YEAR STUDY 12

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Abstract
Horstmann, D. M. (Dept. Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale Univ. School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn. 06510), J. Emmons, L. Gimpel, T. Subrahmanyan and J. T. Riordan. Enterovirus surveillance following a community-wide oral poliovirus vaccination program: a seven-year study. Am J Epidemiol 97: 173–186, 1973.—The impact of oral poliovirus vaccine on the circulation of enteroviruses in two small New England cities was measured by means of virologic surveillance. Sewage specimens, collected at weekly intervals over a seven-year period, revealed the presence of polioviruses regularly throughout the year with no seasonal variation. Other enteroviruses were recovered mainly in the summer and autumn, the same ones tending to appear each year. Rectal swabs collected from infants and preschool children attending the Well Child Conference indicated that over the same period as high as 7% of unvaccinated children were excreting polioviruses, presumably as a result of contact infection acquired from vaccinees. Characterization of poliovirus strains recovered from sewage and from children, using intratypic serodifferentiation and the temperature marker, showed the isolates to be largely vaccine derived. The continuous use of oral poliovirus vaccine in the communities studied has had no apparent influence on the behaviour of other enteroviruses, but dissemination of the vaccine strains through contact infection probably contributes to raising the level of herd immunity among young susceptible children.

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