Six Articles by Walter Dowdle [Polio, Polio Containment, VDPV]

Friday, 18th of December 2015

Six Articles by Walter Dowdle

Even by the standards of CDC, Dr. Walter Dowdle has been exceptionally prolific. His work in polio is of immediate interest as we move into the final stages of eradication.

When vaccine derived polioviruses were first identified, in 2000, it was hoped that they were a rare phenomenon. In this JID article, co-authored with Olen Kew, Dowdle questioned the word “rare.” From the recognition that VDPV, symptomatic and otherwise, was by no means rare, came the realization that has led to the tOPV-bOPV switch, only weeks away as I write, to the universal introduction of IPV, and to the realization that continuing use of OPV is not consistent with WPV eradication. Here is the seminal article on the subject.

Vaccine-derived polioviruses: is it time to stop using the word "rare"?

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/194/5/539.full.pdf+html

Dowdle and colleagues have also done important work on lab containment of poliovirus, another precondition to polio eradication. Here are three of his co-published articles on the subject.

Progress toward laboratory containment of poliovirus after polio eradication.

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/210/suppl_1/S454.full

Will containment of wild poliovirus in laboratories and inactivated poliovirus vaccine production sites be effective for global certification?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2585887/

Can post-eradication laboratory containment of wild polioviruses be achieved?

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/71189/1/80%284%29311-316.pdf

Since disease eradication rests on scientific principles, these need to be set down and elucidated. Here are two authored and co-authored articles by Dowdle on this subject.