Word: polio
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Fortunately, neighboring nerve cells that were not killed by the infection are often able to regenerate axons -- the finger-like connections that link nerves to muscle fiber. That's why the standard rehabilitative therapy for polio victims has been to stimulate nerve activity through heat and rigorous exercise, encouraging the healthy nerves to grow into the spaces left by their infected and damaged kin. "Use it or lose it" was the refrain with which therapists urged on a generation of polio kids...
...eight-cylinder car running on four cylinders -- and after 30 or 40 years, that can take its toll. "Everything has a finite life-span, from a car engine to the human heart," says Dr. Lauro Halstead, director of the postpolio program at the National Rehabilitation Hospital and a polio survivor. "A motor neuron is no different. Neurons that normally drive 20 muscle cells in the polio patient may now have to supply up to 2,000 muscle cells. Basically, this is a demand that the motor nerves are not designed to sustain...
...support the wear-and-tear theory, it does make a lot of sense. It would explain, for example, why so many people are coming down with postpolio syndrome now. The great postwar epidemic peaked in the U.S. in 1952, when more than 20,000 children were paralyzed by polio, and it tapered off in the early '60s, after the Salk vaccine and then the Sabin oral version were introduced. The first wave of postpolio symptoms appeared in the early 1980s, 30 years after the epidemic's peak, and if researchers are correct, the last wave should subside...
...when they were pulled out of school, sent away for treatment and then brought home to face insensitive peers. "You remember that while everyone else was out playing football, you were watching and wishing you could be with them," says Lipshultz. Through support groups and counseling, many polio survivors are for the first time putting those unpleasant memories behind them. "Many of us never got a chance to mourn our losses," says Shnaider. "It's important for people with postpolio to face their experience and allow themselves to feel...
...four decades after the sharp rise in polio cases, many victims began to have symptoms once again. This wave of "post-polio" may not peak until...