SCIENCE FIGHTS PARALYSIS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13239, 15 January 1941, Page 6

SCIENCE FIGHTS PARALYSIS

RESEARCH INTO CAUSES SWEDISH DISCOVERIES A report recently issued by the Swedish State Bacteriological Laboratory on research work in respect of infantile paralysis and its causes carried on at the laboratory indicates that several important discoveries have been made which may be of great value in the fighting of the d'sease. For instance, the virus of infantile paralysis has for the first time in Sweden been discovered in sower water, and it has also been found in food.

Knowledge as to the separation of the virus through the intestinal/ •canal during the acute stage of the disease has been considerably increased as a result of the laboratory’s investigations in the course of the infantile paralysis epidemic in Stockholm last autumn. By employing the very latest research methods it has been possible to isolate the virus from the bowel ejections of typical cases in the earliest stages in such a high degree that the separation of the virus through the bowels can be said to be a constant phenomenon.

In principle this puts infantile paralysis on the same plane as certain bacterial intestinal illnesses whose dissemination methods are known, such as typhus, paratyphus, dysentery and cholera. From the many observations performed by the laboratory regarding the epidemiology of infantile paralysis, it therefore seems legitimate to assume that the disease is chiefly conveyed by indirect ways—e.g., by virus-infect-ed water, food, etc. This does not exclude the possibility of the virus being transferred direct from a sick person to another, but such an occurrence belongs to the rare exceptions. The laboratory has ascertained that sewer water can be a virus-

carrier during an epidemic period, and that the virus can keep itself alive in this environment for a long time. This substantiates experimental observations made by American researchists recently. The laboratory also found the virus last year in the well on a farm in a locality were infantile paralysis was occurring, and similar discoveries have since been made elsewhere. The virus was thus discovered in a bathing pool which was fed from water from a forest stream in the neighbourhood. Many children bathed in the pool, but fortunately only one of them, a nine-year-old boy, was stricken by the disease. Investigations carried out by the laboratory show that it is also possible for foodstuffs to be bearers of the virus under certain circumstances.

Professor Carl Kling, the head of the laboratory, points out that the methods of ascertaining the existence of infantile paralysis virus in re-

search ipaterial of different kinds are circumstantial, time-consuming, and expensive. Researchists have to rely upon experiments on animals, and at present there is only one usable type of animal—the ape; but trials are also being made with cotton rats, of which a number recently have been received from America. He also declares that observations made by American scientists are of extraordinary interest to infantile paralysis research, for which they seem to open fresh avenues. It is therefore of extreme importance that their observations should be tested by other investigators, and the Swedish State Bacteriological Laboratory has for some months been in a position to do this.

The Swedish professor finally declares that although some ctark aspects of the epidemiology of infantile paralysis have been illuminated ■by the experimental research of recent years, there still remains a series of unsolved problems for science to tackle.