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Microbiology 101: Lucas

See the MICRO 101 Research Guide [MORE RESOURCES ADDED TO GUIDE ON 11/17/22 - visit for most current links/etc]

Erynn Lucas’s microbiology students are working on an assignment to find out info about polioviruses and immunization. She told them that they’d probably be using peer-reviewed sources from Google Scholar, so that’s where students have been going first, with results as expected: much confusion since the topic/terminology is complex.

UPDATE: Lucas's notes on how she's grading: I am looking for critical thinking and logic. If they can't find anything about the three types of polio, then that is ok. They can talk about polio in general. And for the disease portion and the 1000 people, as long as they use logic I will basically take anything. 

I’m having students look up "polio" in Gale eBooks and doing background reading before turning to the scholarly work.  

This might help: There are 3 types (serotypes) of polioviruses: P1, P2, P3. There are also 3 types of paralytic poliomyelitis, so students need to read carefully and get their terminology straight or it can be confusing. In short, poliovirus is the virus; poliomyelitis is the DISEASE caused by the virus. Some poliomyelitis is asymptomatic, other kinds are mild symptoms, and a small percentage is the most debilitating type, paralytic poliomyelitis. 

Here are some recommended sources for the questions in the assignment. 

General Polio info sources: 

Polio Types and Disease Potential:

This source helps answer some of the what’s being asked for here—esp check out “Demographics” and “Description” sections: 

Bennington, Linda K., et al. "Polio." The Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health: Infancy through Adolescence, edited by Jacqueline L. Longe, 4th ed., vol. 5, Gale, 2021, pp. 2253-2257. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX8067400659/GVRL?u=modestojc_main&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=59875f7d. [Link]

The first paragraph of the Intro in this paper talks about genetic makeup of polioviruses in general:
Okemoto-Nakamura, Y., Someya, K., Yamaji, T. et al. Poliovirus-nonsusceptible Vero cell line for the World Health Organization global action plan. Sci Rep 11, 6746 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-86050-3 [link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-86050-3]

Info on genetic characteristics of the virus

Dowdle, Walter R., and Maureen E. Birmingham. "The biologic principles of poliovirus eradication." The Journal of infectious diseases 175.Supplement_1 (1997): S286-S292.[Link]

For more Disease Potential (Part 2 of the question on Polio Types):

                Under “Symptoms,” disease potential is described—echoes some of the info from the Gale Ency of Children’s Health: :

Hoyle, Brian Douglas, PhD, and Tish Davidson, MD. "Poliomyelitis." The Gale Encyclopedia of Neurological Disorders, edited by Deirdre S. Hiam, 3rd ed., vol. 3, Gale, 2017, pp. 984-988. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3662900315/GVRL?u=modestojc_main&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=632d2ad8. [Link]

This source says that it’s 100% transmissible and then goes into what percentage of those infected go on to develop flaccid paralysis.

Waseh, Shayan. "Polio." Encyclopedia of Public Health: Principles, People, and Programs, edited by Sally Kuykendall, vol. 2, Greenwood, 2018, pp. 491-494. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX7644900171/GVRL?u=modestojc_main&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=0a8b3b30. [Link]

Polio vaccination immunity

This paper mentions humoral and intestinal immunity

Auzenbergs M, Fountain H, Macklin G et al. The impact of surveillance and other factors on detection of emergent and circulating vaccine derived polioviruses [version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]. Gates Open Res 2022, 5:94 (https://doi.org/10.12688/gatesopenres.13272.2 [LINK https://gatesopenresearch.org/articles/5-94/v2]  

Public Health Policy:

There are different kinds of vaccines: oral polio vaccine (OPV) and inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV). This article explains the diff between the two and helps students answer questions about which form of the vaccine might be best for global eradication efforts:

Bennington, Linda, et al. "Polio Vaccine." The Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health: Infancy through Adolescence, edited by Jacqueline L. Longe, 4th ed., vol. 5, Gale, 2021, pp. 2257-2260. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX8067400660/GVRL?u=modestojc_main&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=921e526d.[Link]

This article gives a summary of global vaccination efforts & describes how there was a big “Switch” from one kind of OPV (containing serotypes of all 3 polioviruses) to another containing only serotypes 1 and 3) and what the consequences have been: 

G. R. Macklin, K. M. O’Reilly, N. C. Grassly, W. J. Edmunds, O. Mach, R. Santhana Gopala Krishnan, A. Voorman, J. F. Vertefeuille, J. Abdelwahab, N. Gumede, A. Goel, S. Sosler, J. Sever, A. S. Bandyopadhyay, M. A. Pallansch, R. Nandy, P. Mkanda, O. M. Diop and R. W. Sutter. (2020, April). Evolving epidemiology of poliovirus serotype 2 following withdrawal of the serotype 2 oral poliovirus vaccine. Science, 368 (6489). https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.aba1238

More on the globally synchronized “Switch” to bivalent OPV, important to understand for public health policy/global efforts:

Ramirez Gonzalez A, Farrell M, Menning L, Garon J, Everts H, Hampton LM, Dolan SB, Shendale S, Wanyoike S, Veira CL, Châtellier GMD, Kurji F, Rubin J, Boualam L, Chang Blanc D, Patel M. Implementing the Synchronized Global Switch from Trivalent to Bivalent Oral Polio Vaccines-Lessons Learned From the Global Perspective. J Infect Dis. 2017 Jul 1;216(suppl_1):S183-S192. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiw626. PMID: 28838179; PMCID: PMC5854099. [LINK https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5854099/]

Read INTRO of this study to understand how the OPV can evolve into vaccine-derived polioviruses that look exactly like wild polioviruses: 

Andrew L. Valesano, Mami Taniuchi, William J. Fitzsimmons, Md Ohedul Islam, Tahmina Ahmed, Khalequ Zaman, Rashidul Haque, Wesley Wong, Michael Famulare, Adam S. Lauring, The Early Evolution of Oral Poliovirus Vaccine Is Shaped by Strong Positive Selection and Tight Transmission Bottlenecks, Cell Host & Microbe, Volume 29, Issue 1, 2021, Pages 32-43.e4, ISSN 1931-3128, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2020.10.011. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1931312820305746)

CURRENT POLIO INFO just for context

This article describes what’s happening currently w/ recent case of polio in New York

Link-Gelles, Ruth, et al. “Public Health Response to a Case of Paralytic Poliomyelitis in an Unvaccinated Person and Detection of Poliovirus in Wastewater -- New York, June-August 2022.” MMWR: Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 71, no. 33, Aug. 2022, pp. 1065–69. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7133e2. Link to article in EBSCO: http://libdbmjc.yosemite.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=158644770&site=ehost-live