Decades-Old Soviet Research Hit at Plausible Strategy to Combat COVID-19

In the 50s, a married duo of virologists from Moscow tested a vaccine on their own children. Fast-forward to 2020, the same vaccine's side effect, which they found five decades back, has sparked new hope to combat COVID-19. 

For the children--both boys--it was only a "sweet treat." But to their parents, both distinguished medical researchers, what transpired in Moscow one day in the late 50s was a vigorous trial with many lives at stake--with their own sons as their research subjects.

One of the boys, now Dr. Peter Chumakov, aged seven then, said they fell in line waiting for their parent to pop a "sugar cube laced with weakened poliovirus" that acted as a vaccine to the disease. Dr. Chumakov recalled, he was eating the sugar cube from his mother's hands.

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The Vaccine Earns Renewed Attention Amid COVID-19

At present, the same vaccine is earning renewed attention from scientists, including the virologist couple's sons, who both grew up as virologists like their parents. The researchers are looking at it as a plausible weapon that can combat COVID-19, according to the boys' mother, Dr. Marina Voroshilova.

Dr. Voroshilova proved the live vaccine for polio had an unanticipated advantage that, as it turns out, could be effective in fighting the present virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people globally.

Mostly, people who were given the vaccine did not get ill with other viral diseases for a while afterwards. Dr. Voroshilova also gave each of the boys polio vaccines every fall to protect them from the flu.

To date, researchers from different nations have taken strong attention in the notion of repurposing vaccines currently available to find out if they can offer even just provisional resistance to COVID-19.

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'Among the Hottest Areas of Immunology'

According to Dr. Robert Gallo, a strong supporter of testing the polio vaccine against COVID-19, repurposing vaccines is "among the hottest areas of immunology." 

Dr. Gallo, who is currently the director for the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said that even if the weakened poliovirus results in immunity for a short period like one month or so, it would still save a lot of lives.

However, the institute's director said that there are still risks to be considered. In an extremely rare instance, the weakened virus used in the vaccine can transform into a more hazardous formulation, lead to polio, and spread the infection to people. In relation to this, the danger of paralysis is approximated to be one in more than 2.5 million vaccinations.

This month, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease deferred research, which Gallo's Institute, the University of Buffalo, the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Cleveland Clinic designed to experiment with the efficacy of live polio vaccine to fight COVID-19 using health workers as their subjects.

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