A WIDESPREAD DISEASE

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25394, 17 January 1948, Page 6

A WIDESPREAD DISEASE

POSSIBLE CAUSE OF ADULT IMMUNITY

In a paper which Professor H. J. Seddon read at the Royal Institute of Public Health and Hygiene recently, on the epidemiology of infantile paralysis, he emphasised the widespread distribution of the disease, according to “Nursing Times,” the journal of the Royal College of Nursing. Professor Seddon, who is Nuffield professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Oxford University, said that he had seen an Eskimo who contracted poliomyelitis in Greenland, and an Indian who contracted it in India.

The relative immunity of adults in an endemic zone to the diseasd during epidemics was probably due to the fact that, without knowing it, they had already had a mild non-paralytic attack during childhood. Another group which was relatively immittie were children under one year of age. It had been suggested that Xhese babies had a passive immunity conferred upon them by an immune mother. “I do not know how true that is,” was Professor Seddon’s comment. Sir Alfred Webb-Johnson, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, who presided, said afterwards tnat he wondered whether the immunity of young babies might not be. due to the milk factor. Professor Seddon pointed out that during the 1943 epidemic in Malta, a number of British servicemen contracted the disease, although they were adults and came from a country where poliomyelitis was endemic. The explanation probably was that there was more than one strain of poliomyelitis virus, which was also the reason for those rare, but now documented, cases of second attacks of the disease. Experience in Malta in 1943 and in Mauritius in 1945 indicated that malnutrition was not a pre-dis-P ?4.? ng £ actor - . Evidence from Malta, although conflicting, suggested .that gastro-intestinal infection did not predispose to poliomyelitis. Chronic overcrowding also did not contribute to the disease.