Paralytic poliomyelitis in a child with agammaglobulinemia

This paper gives the clinical, immunological and virological data on a patient with agammaglobulinemia who developed paralytic poliomyelitis. The patient was a 3 year-old boy who had a typical B-cell defect without a T-cell defect. He had profound hypogammaglobulinemia and defective plasma cells and had repeated pyogenic infections which were controlled by gammaglobulin replacement therapy. At 3 years of age, he was admitted to our hospital with suspected meningitis. He had fever, tremor and neck stiffness for 3 days and subsequently developed paralysis in his left arm and right leg. There was lymphocytosis in the cerebrospinal fluid. A non vaccine-like strain of poliovirus type 2 was isolated from the stool.