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• A man who knows

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published: Friday, October 16, 2009

Polio: Forgotten, but not gone

By CHRISTOPHER TUFFLEY

christopher.tuffley@newssun.com

SEBRING -- Polio. There was a time that word struck the kind of terror the word AIDS does now.

A virus that particularly strikes children, it killed and paralyzed thousands. The iron lung was invented to save polio sufferers who could not breathe on their own.

There was no known cure. There still isn't.

Being a virus, polio created epidemics.

According to the Polio History Timeline, in 1934, an outbreak occurred in Los Angeles. In one four-month period, one hospital treated almost 2,500 cases.

In 1952, about 58,000 cases were reported nationwide; in 1953 about 35,000.

With the development of vaccines and robust immunization programs the disease was brought under control in the United States by the end of the 20th century, leaving nearly 2 million survivors.

But Richard Bruno, a polio survivor and organizer of the International Post-Polio Task Force, as well as the director of The Post-Polio Institute at the Englewood (N. J.) Hospital and Medical Center, warns the threat of a polio outbreak remains very real. There have been seven reported cases in the U.S. since 2005, resulting in one death.

He is serious enough about the dangers that despite being confined to a wheelchair he travels to educate the general public. It is the reason he was in town for the Sebring Noon Rotary luncheon Oct. 6.

Unlike smallpox, Bruno told the group, the polio virus is alive and well. New cases are reported every year, especially in Third World countries.

With the ease of international travel, he added, and the fact that roughly 70 percent of individuals who carry the virus show no symptoms, the danger of contagion is real.

This is one reason October has been designated Polio Awareness Month.

The only protection against the virus, Bruno said, is immunization. But a group must have at least 95 percent of its members immunized for the whole to be considered safe.

Florida meets the 95 percent threshold, one of only eight states to do so. Highlands County does even better, with 98 percent of individuals inoculated.

The United State as a whole, however, only has a 93 percent average, and eight states less than 90 percent, Bruno said.

Part of the problem is because the polio vaccination is not required and 20 states allow parents to refuse immunization simply because they believe it is dangerous.

For example, some parents believe inoculations cause autism, but Bruno said 16 "huge studies" have shown there is no correlation between the two.

The standard protocol, he said, is to vaccinate children at two months, four months and between six and 18 months, with a booster at four years.

Bruno recommends a booster for adults traveling to areas where polio has been reported recently.

He wants people to remember what a terrible disease polio is.

Simplified, the disease destroys neurons, so muscles no longer receive messages from the brain. Paralysis often results. Without the nerve stimulation muscles atrophy, although patients retain feeling.

But the original onset of the disease is only part of its devastation.

With the passage of time polio survivors have found themselves dealing with a secondary condition called post-polio syndrome.

The results of PPS are overwhelming fatigue, muscle weakness, muscle and joint pain, sleep disorders, heightened sensitivity to anesthesia, cold and pain as well as difficulty swallowing and breathing.

These symptoms typically manifest themselves about 30 years after the virus first strikes, and affect roughly 75 percent of those who suffered paralytic polio and 40 percent of non-paralytic polio survivors.

"The polio virus-damaged neurons are now failing and dying from overuse, causing the debilitating symptoms," Bruno said, explaining that PPS is not a recurrence of the original virus. "PPS is caused by the body tiring of doing too much work, for too long, with damaged neurons."

Roughly 110,000 polio survivors live in Florida, there are estimates that about 700 of them live in Highlands County.

Deanna Pieretti, another polio survivor, founded Handicapped Americans Love of Life Organization here in Sebring partly as a support group for people with PPS.

For more information call 385-1196.