Polio Clues

Doctors have battled epidemics of infantile paralysis for 50 years, but they still know practically nothing about the cause & cure of that dread disease. In trying to come to grips with poliomyelitis, they still clutch at brilliant, fantastic-sounding clues hit on from time to time by hard-working bacteriologists. Last week, at the Manhattan meeting of the International Congress for Microbiology, two new clues turned up.

Vitamin C. While conning statistics of a poliomyelitis epidemic in Australia last year, Bacteriologist Claus W. Jungeblut of Columbia noticed that patients with ill-balanced diets suffered far more from the disease than those who had lots of vitamin C. Dr. Jungeblut put the statistics to experimental test, by going to work on some monkeys. He dribbled small amounts of polio virus into the noses of 56 monkeys, then gave them injections of natural vitamin C. Result: 33 monkeys (59%) became mildly sick, but had no fever or paralysis. The remaining 23 "developed complete or partial paralysis of the extremities." A group of 20 monkeys was given virus but no vitamin; only five (25%) escaped paralysis.

"It seems safe to state," said Dr. Jungeblut, "that under certain restricted experimental conditions, vitamin C is capable of influencing favorably the course of the infection in monkeys." The vitamin does not relieve paralytic symptoms, he continued, but merely checks the course of the disease before paralysis sets in. Dr. Jungeblut has not yet tried vitamin C injections in human patients, but he feels sure that "a low level of vitamin C nutrition predisposes to infection and severity of attack."

Oestrogen. One of the few facts known about the polio virus is that it usually enters the body through the delicate mucous membranes of the nose. Five years ago, while studying polio epidemics in Massachusetts and Vermont, Dr. William Lloyd Aycock of Harvard noticed that polio often ran in families, even when brothers and sisters were living far apart. He suspected that children of these susceptible families might have inherited unusually thin nose linings, easily penetrated by the polio virus. So he decided to set up "virus barriers" of tough new cells in the nasal membranes of monkeys by injecting them with tiny doses of the female sex hormone oestrogen, which, for some strange reason, stimulates cell growth in nose linings.

He divided 48 monkeys into two groups. Group One was given oestrogen injections, then nasal sprays of polio virus. Group Two was given no oestrogen but was merely infected with the virus. Result: Only twelve members of Group One came down with polio, 22 members of Group Two. Most likely, said Dr. Aycock last week, artificial thickening of their nasal membranes protected the first group of monkeys against the disease. Whether oestrogen barriers might also protect human beings, he did not venture to say.

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