Persistence of Virus Excretion in the Stools of Poliomyelitis Patients

It is now an established fact that many patients with acute poliomyelitis excrete virus in their stools, but little is known of the duration of excretion of virus in fecal material beyond the first four weeks of the disease. The literature up to 1940 has been summarized in two papers by Vignec, Paul and Trask.1An example of long persistence of the virus was reported in 1939 by Lépine and his associates,2who demonstrated it in the stools of a child forty-one, seventy-four and possibly one hundred and twenty-three days after the abortive disease. Since 1940 two late isolations have been reported: one by Howitt, Buss and Shaffrath3fifty days, and another by Wenner and Casey4fortyfive days after the onset of poliomyelitis. Piszczek and his associates5recovered virus from the stools of a healthy contact who had been exposed one and two months before