Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Wastewater sleuths at UNLV now on the lookout for the polio virus

Polio

John Minchillo / AP

A worker walks Aug. 12 alongside the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant’s array of digester eggs in the Brooklyn borough of New York. In the U.S., an unvaccinated young adult suffered paralysis in his legs after being infected with polio, New York officials revealed last month. The virus has also shown up in New York sewers, suggesting it is spreading. In Southern Nevada, the risk for contracting polio remains low, and there have been no clinical cases, said Edwin Oh, a professor who leads UNLV’s wastewater surveillance team.

Wastewater detectives in Las Vegas are gearing up to look for the polio virus after it recently was found in sewage in New York and London.

Click to enlarge photo

This 1964 microscope image shows damage from the polio virus to human spinal cord tissue. The CDC recommends that children get four doses of the polio vaccine, at 2 months old, 4 months old, 6 through 18 months old, and 4 through 6 years old.

In Southern Nevada, the risk for contracting polio remains low, and there have been no clinical cases, said Edwin Oh, a professor who leads UNLV’s wastewater surveillance team.

Oh and his team are setting up a surveillance program to catch traces of the poliovirus and will have results this week, he said.

The surveillance work of the UNLV team has been crucial in monitoring the community’s response to COVID-19 and now monkeypox.

“I don’t want to make this issue seem small necessarily, but context is important,” Oh said about the lack of polio cases found in Southern Nevada.

The presence of the poliovirus in the city’s sewage samples suggests likely local circulation of the virus, New York health officials said. Authorities in Jerusalem and London have also discovered evidenceof the polio virus in those locales.

“The risk to New Yorkers is real but the defense is so simple — get vaccinated against polio,” New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said. “With polio circulating in our communities there is simply nothing more essential than vaccinating our children to protect them from this virus, and if you’re an unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated adult, please choose now to get the vaccine. Polio is entirely preventable and its reappearance should be a call to action for all of us.”

Oh said the group most at-risk for contracting polio would be those who did not receive the four-shot vaccination against the virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that about 96% of Nevada kindergarteners from the 2020-21 school year were vaccinated, but Oh said there could still be some “lapses” in the community that will need information on how to protect themselves should polio become a threat here.

“I don’t think we’re at a major risk of a large outbreak, but I think there are going to potentially be communities where we might see some risk, and so we’re trying to assess (the) risk in some of these communities,” Oh said. “We want to be able to be in a place where we can say, this is an area that we can get information out (to).”

Polio can lead to permanent paralysis of the arms and legs and even death in some cases, the CDC said. In the 1950s, before the vaccine was introduced, polio was the most feared disease in the United States and caused more than 15,000 cases of paralysis each year, the CDC said.

“This is sobering; we know polio spreads silently, and it’s likely that there are many people infected with polio and shedding the virus in these communities,” said Dr. José R. Romero, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “This is also an urgent and living reminder of the importance of vaccination.”

Poliovirus is a “life-threatening disease” that can be spread through person-to-person contact, usually by sneezing or direct contact with the feces of an infected person, according to the CDC.

Although most people who get infected with poliovirus won’t show visible symptoms, the virus can cause sore throat, fever, tiredness, nausea, headache and stomach pain, the CDC said. More serious symptoms, like meningitis or paralysis, have also occurred in a small group of people.

Earlier this year, officials in Israel detected polio in an unvaccinated 3-year-old, who suffered paralysis. Several other children, nearly all of them unvaccinated, were found to have the virus but no symptoms.

In June, British authorities reported finding evidence in sewage that the virus was spreading, though no infections in people were identified. Last week, the government said all children in London ages 1 to 9 would be offered a booster shot.

In the U.S., an unvaccinated young adult suffered paralysis in his legs after being infected with polio, New York officials revealed last month. The CDC has considered polio eliminated from the U.S. since 1979, when the last known case of the virus originated here. It’s unknown where the young adult from New York became infected.

While Oh doesn’t believe there is a need for “any major call to get boosted against poliovirus, especially in Southern Nevada,” he does recommend that people become informed on the effectiveness of vaccines against this virus.

“If you’re not vaccinated or you’re not sure, I think it’s important to learn a little more about how a vaccination can protect you from polio,” Oh said.

To stop polio in Britain, the U.S. and Israel, what is needed is more vaccination, experts say. That is something Columbia University’s Barrett worries could be challenging in the COVID-19 era.

The CDC recommends that children get four doses of the polio vaccine, at 2 months old, 4 months old, 6 through 18 months old, and 4 through 6 years old.

“What’s different now is a reduction in trust of authorities and the political polarization in countries like the U.S. and the U.K.,” Barrett said. “The presumption that we can quickly get vaccination numbers up quickly may be more challenging now.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.