Originally posted by Electric Skeptic
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Indian researchers recently described the relationship between rates of “non-polio acute flaccid paralysis” (NPAFP) and the country’s practice of “pulse polio immunisation” (periodic OPV vaccination of all children under age five). The number of polio rounds “had a high correlation with the NPAFP rate,” and the mortality rate in NPAFP patients was “twice the mortality rate for wild polio.” When the researchers calculated “the number of paralyzed children each year which exceeded the expected numbers” for the period from 2000–2017, they found that there were “an additional 491,000 paralyzed children” above the expected number of 149,000. Given the strong association of non-polio paralysis “with the number of OPV doses delivered,” the researchers intriguingly speculated that:
“…repeated doses of the live vaccine virus delivered to the intestine may colonize the gut and alter the viral microbiome of the intestine, and this can result in strain shifts of enteropathogens. It is possible that new neurotropic [i.e., preferentially attacking the nervous system] enteroviruses colonizing the gut may induce paralysis.”
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