The Fight against Poliovirus Is Not Over

Chaldam Jespère Mbani; Magloire Pandoua Nekoua; Donatien Moukassa; Didier Hober

doi:10.3390/microorganisms11051323

The Fight against Poliovirus Is Not Over

Microorganisms. 2023 May 17;11(5):1323. doi: 10.3390/microorganisms11051323.

Authors

Chaldam Jespère Mbani^{1

2}, Magloire Pandoua Nekoua¹, Donatien Moukassa², Didier Hober¹

Affiliations

¹ Laboratoire de Virologie URL3610, Université de Lille, CHU Lille, 59000 Lille, France.
² Laboratoire de Biologie Cellulaire et Moléculaire, Faculté des Sciences et Technique, Université Marien Ngouabi, Brazzaville BP 69, Congo.

Abstract

Poliovirus (PV), the virus that causes both acute poliomyelitis and post-polio syndrome, is classified within the Enterovirus C species, and there are three wild PV serotypes: WPV1, WPV2 and WPV3. The launch of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) in 1988 eradicated two of the three serotypes of WPV (WPV2 and WPV3). However, the endemic transmission of WPV1 persists in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2022. There are cases of paralytic polio due to the loss of viral attenuation in the oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV), known as vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV). Between January 2021 and May 2023, a total of 2141 circulating VDPV (cVDPV) cases were reported in 36 countries worldwide. Because of this risk, inactivated poliovirus (IPV) is being used more widely, and attenuated PV2 has been removed from OPV formulations to obtain bivalent OPV (containing only types 1 and 3). In order to avoid the reversion of attenuated OPV strains, the new OPV, which is more stable due to genome-wide modifications, as well as sabin IPV and virus-like particle (VLP) vaccines, is being developed and offers promising solutions for eradicating WP1 and VDPV.

Keywords: eradication; poliovirus; reversion; vaccine; vaccine-derived poliovirus.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Ministère de l’Education Nationale de la Recherche et de la Technologie, Université de Lille (ULR3610), and Centre Hospitalier et Universitaire de Lille. C.J.M. was supported by a “SSHN JEUNE CHERCHEUR” scholarship of Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Etrangères and by Campus France (130771P).