Polio vaccinations in the U.S. are safe and effective
December 24, 2024
Summary: Polio vaccinations are the reason that polio virus has been eliminated from the Americas and much of the world.
Source: Screenshot from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Pink Book that was available in 2019. Here’s a link to the current (2021) CDC Pink Book.
As a physician, I never saw a case of paralytic polio. As a Boy Scout, I had a scoutmaster who was one of the last people who became a paraplegic due to a childhood polio infection in the 1950s. Mitch McConnell may be one of the last elected officials who is a polio survivor, with a paralyzed left leg from an infection when he was a toddler in the 1940s. In 1952, there were 21,000 cases of paralytic polio in the United States.
There have been no cases of domestic paralytic polio in the U.S. in three decades, although there were cases brought to the U.S. from abroad in 1993 and 2022. There have been no children paralyzed by polio in the U.S. because we have high rates of polio vaccination among young children. International travel could bring polio back to the U.S. if our vaccination rates fall.
The U.S. now uses an inactivated (killed) polio vaccine (IPV) administered as an injection. This vaccine cannot cause paralytic polio and stimulates the immune system to produce protective antibodies. The oral polio vaccine (OPV), which contains a weakened live virus, can in rare cases cause paralytic polio, but has not been used in the U.S. since 2000. However, OPV is still used in some developing countries because it is cost-effective, requires no needles, and can help spread immunity to others through community transmission of the weakened virus.
Here are some resources with information about polio vaccination:
● Center for Disease Control and Prevention: About Polio
● Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices: Polio Vaccine Recommendations
● European CDC Polio Fact Sheet
● Kaiser Health News Frequently Asked Questions
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