IMMUNITY TO POLIOMYELITIS IN THE GENERAL POPULATION
PROBABLE MECHANISM OF PRODUCTION
- S. D. KRAMER, M.D.
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Excerpt
Immunity to poliomyelitis, as indicated by neutralization tests, has been shown to be widespread. A notion of the mechanism through which it comes about may be gained from a consideration of the rapidity with which it develops in reference to age and concentration of population. Infants born of immune mothers are immune to poliomyelitis for at least the early months of life:1 The age distribution of the disease and neutralization tests show that this immunity is lost by the end of the first year. The age distribution further indicates an increasing immunity in the population with increasing age. Neutralization tests on persons of different ages have shown that nine tenths of urban persons become immune by the time adult life is reached.2 The marked discrepancy between the amount of immunity to poliomyelitis in urban and in rural populations suggests that its extent and rapidity of development are related
Footnotes
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Read before the Section on Pathology and Physiology at the Eighty-Third Annual Session of the American Medical Association, New Orleans, May 12, 1932.
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The work on which this paper is based was supported by the Harvard Infantile Paralysis Commission, a fund privately donated to the Vermont Department of Public Health and a gift from the International Commission for the Study of Infantile Paralysis.
