ABSTRACT
During the epidemic of paralytic polio that struck in Guatemala in 1982 and 1983 a longitudinal study was carried out of the clinical and virological characteristics of 133 children admitted with this diagnosis to a hospital in the capital city. The age of the patients ranged between four months and five years; 68 percent of them had not received any dose of oral polio vaccine and 6 percent had received three doses. Poliovirus was isolated from 102 children; in 92 of these cases the virus excreted was only of type 1, in seven it was of type 2, in one of type 3, and in two of types 1 and 2. Sixty-six virus strains were taken for intratypical differentiation and it was found that 55 of the 56 strains of type 1 virus and the sole strain of type 3 were viruses not analogous to the Sabin virus, and the nine of type 2 were analogous to it. These findings confirm the need to vaccinate during the first six months of life and that adequate measures to control the transmission of wild poliovirus would greatly reduce morbidity from the disease