Word: postpolio
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...symptoms of postpolio mimic those of the original disease, albeit in a less virulent form. They include fatigue and exhaustion, muscle weakness, painful joints and, sometimes, difficult breathing. The discomfort usually begins in the muscles affected by the original infection but can spread. Patients who got polio before age 10 and suffered particularly severe cases seem to be the most susceptible to the aftereffects...
What triggers postpolio syndrome? One possibility is that the polio virus becomes active again after decades of lying dormant in victims' cells. This notion gained support in 1991, when British scientists reported that 58% of the postpolio patients they tested had high concentrations of polio-type antibodies not only in their blood, which is to be expected, but also in their spinal fluid, which suggests a current infection. That does not explain, however, why the disease resurfaces so long after the original infection, and attempts to replicate the British findings have been unsuccessful. Since it's possible that the dormant...
...most postpolio experts favor a competing theory that says wear and tear on the nerves is to blame. Polio initially attacks the nerves by invading the body through the mouth or nose, traveling through the bloodstream to the spinal cord and lodging in the nerve cells that control muscle activity. As the disease progresses, nerve cells in the spinal cord are damaged or killed, paralyzing muscles that lead to the arms, legs, stomach and chest...
...harder to get the muscles moving -- like an 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...
Although there is no direct evidence to 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...