The Diagnosis of Abortive Cases of Poliomyelitis by the Demonstration of Specific Antibodies

The occurrence of abortive cases of poliomyelitis has already been established upon clinical and epidemiological ground. Netter and Levaditi 1 have given the only specific proof of an abortive case of poliomyelitis in a human being by demonstrating, in the serum of such a case, immune bodies capable of neutralizing the virus of poliomyelitis in vitro. Their case was a child which suffered a clinically obscure, mild illness about the same time that another child of the same family suffered a frank attack of poliomyelitis.

We have undertaken a similar demonstration in nine suspected abortive cases of poliomyelitis selected from a much larger number observed during an epidemic of acute anterior poliomyelitis in Iowa in the summer of 1910. Special interest is attached to these cases because of the mildness of their symptoms, the frequency of similar cases and their epidemiological relation to cases of frank poliomyelitis.