Polio - The Late Effects Reality

INTRODUCTION: POLIO

Polio has been with us for a long time – the earliest recorded descriptions are from some 3000 years ago in Egypt (Browns University, USA, Polio 2000 - History). However, it was only much later that the world experienced the epidemics that appeared in the early to middle Twentieth Century. These were brought about by many factors, mostly sociological, in that society’s infrastructure developed. This was especially true regarding the supply of drinking water and sewage facilities, for Poliomyelitis is more of a disease of a developing society rather than the under developed.

The Poliovirus "enters a susceptible host in contaminated drinking water or through contact with contaminated surfaces, such as unwashed hands. After passing through the stomach, the virus reaches the intestine, where it establishes itself in the cells of the intestinal lining (the "gut mucosa"). There, it infects cells and replicates. In most cases, this results in a transient, self-limiting diarrhoea, or it may be completely asymptomatic. Unfortunately, the virus is not always so benign" (Browns University, USA, Polio 2000 – Pathogenesis).

In approximately 1% of infections (Browns University, USA, Polio 2000 – Pathogenesis), the virus spreads to the nervous system, eventually reaching the motor neurones and causing paralysis and, in extreme cases, death (12% in the American outbreak of 1952 (Halstead, 1998)). Dr Hardiman, Consultant Neurologist, Beaumont Hospital Dublin, in her opening address to the Post Polio Support Group (Post Polio Support Group) Conference on 12 March 1999, said that, of the many hundreds that become infected with the virus, most only experience flu like symptoms. However, 1% would go on to develop the acute form of the disease. Hardiman (1999) went on to state that the World Health Organisation says "for every 1 case of confirmed acute Polio diagnosed there are 100 + more who have been infected and therefore it is classed as an epidemic".