INTRAUTERINE POLIOMYELITIS INFECTION

Abstract

Pregnancy may predispose the mother toward paralytic poliomyelitis. Moreover, although poliomyelitis is said to be uncommon before 1 year of age and unusual in the neonatal period, a fair number of cases of infection of the newborn have been reported and at least 30 of these have been within the first month of life. Mouton and others¹have summarized the findings in 17 cases collected from the world literature up to 1948 and added 10 patients under 6 months of age studied by them. Up to 1942, Hess²had found 63 infants recorded in the American literature and Compos³reported on about 60 patients under 5 months of age, including 3-day-old and 5-day-old infants. The youngest on record, only 2 days old, was observed by Aycock.⁴More recently Baskin and others,⁵Shelokov and Weinstein,⁶and Abramson and others⁷have reported additional cases of