Immunization Side Effects

Polio vaccine

Polio (poliomyelitis) is a disease caused by a virus. In mild cases, the person will experience fever, sore throat, nausea, and pain and stiffness in the spine and legs. In more severe cases, known as paralytic polio, the disease can cause paralysis of some muscles of the body and can cause death in its most serious cases. Fortunately, the incidence of polio has become rare since vaccines became widely available in the 1950s. The most common vaccine in use in the late 1990s was developed by Albert Bruce Sabin in the late 1950s. It is the oral, live-virus vaccine, referred to as Oral Polio Vaccine (OPS) or Sabin oral vaccine. OPV is given in four doses, at two and four months of age, between six and eighteen months, and between four and six years of age. (A fifth dose may be prescribed if the child lives in or is traveling to a country where polio is more prevalent than it is in the United States.) The advantages of OPV are that it provides a strong, permanent immunity to polio, and can be painlessly administered orally.

Side effects. The oral, live-virus vaccine is, as its name implies, a live virus. Therefore, the polio virus will be present in the infant’s or child’s stools for several days after the vaccine is given. A nonimmunized individual coming into contact with the stool could be infected. If a parent of caregiver is not immunized against polio, the pediatrician should be informed before the vaccine is given. Other individuals who could be susceptible to the live virus include anyone with a compromised immune system such as children with leukemia, those being treated with long-term steroids, receiving treatment for any kind of cancer, or those infected with HIV. In these cases, inactivated polio virus (IPV) is the safe choice for immunization against polio.

The OPV was not the first vaccine to be developed against polio. An alternative, the inactivated polio vaccine or IPV, was developed by Jonas Salk and was first available to the public in 1954. The IPV is given by injection in the leg or arm, rather than administered orally, and provides less vigorous immunity than the OPV.

Side effects: Individuals who are allergic to the drugs neomycin or streptomycin should not receive IPV. Pregnant women can safely receive either OPV or IPV.

Read more: http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/immunization/2#ixzz1Rdl7Webj