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Poliomyelitis, or Heine-Medin disease. What causes it, how to prevent it and can it be treated?
The poliovirus causes an infectious disease which, in its most severe course, can lead to severe disability or death. Fortunately, thanks to the achievements of modern medicine, the risk of developing the disease is already extremely low. Find out what is poliomyelitis, how the disease proceeds and whether you should be afraid of it.
Heine-Medin, poliomyelitis or childhood palsy?
For starters, it is worth clarifying a few issues related to terminology. The three types of polio virus cause a disease whose full Latin name is poliomyelitis anterior acuta. In Polish nomenclature, the term: acute widespread infantile paralysis or: viral anterior horn inflammation of the spinal cord is used. Another name for poliomyelitis is Heine-Medin disease, from the names of the researchers who described it.
This multitude of terms creates a lot of confusion about Heine-Medin disease. For example, many people mistakenly assume that poliomyelitis is typhoid. It is worth knowing that this is a completely different disease entity with a bacterial and not viral basis.
Should we be afraid of poliomyelitis?
In the first half of the 1994th century, there was a poliomyelitis pandemic in Europe, North America, Austria and New Zealand. It was stopped thanks to the invention of an effective polio vaccine. America has been considered polio-free since 2001, and in XNUMX the World Health Organization announced that the polio virus was extinct in Europe. Currently, it is only occurring in developing countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and some African countries.
However, it is worth remembering that viruses are extremely susceptible to mutation. The effectiveness of vaccines may also be reduced due to the huge popularity of the so-called anti-vaccination movements, influencing many people not to vaccinate themselves and their children.
Poliomyelitis – a disease with many faces
The polio virus enters the body through the ingestion or droplets. It then becomes infected, which usually starts within 7 to 14 days.
Interestingly, 90 to 95% of polio infections are completely asymptomatic. 4 to 8% of infections take the form of the so-called miscarriage with non-specific (typical for many different diseases) symptoms such as fever, diarrhea or sore throat. Usually the patient’s body is able to produce antibodies that neutralize the virus and thus the patient recovers, sometimes without even assuming that he has undergone poliomyelitis.
Symptoms of poliomyelitis in the most severe form called paralytic poliomyelitis are completely different. It affects only no more than 0,5% of those infected. Within 48 hours, the virus attacks motor neurons in the anterior horns of the spinal cord, causing paralysis of various parts of the body. There are three basic forms of paralysis:
- the spinal form, in which there is an asymmetrical paralysis of the muscles, most often the lower limbs, less often the upper limbs, or the trunk. It may have the form of complete paralysis or paresis. Paralyzed muscles diminish over time;
- bulbar form, where the nerve centers in the base of the brain are paralyzed. This results in general problems with moving, speaking, and often breathing, which puts the patient in a state of immediate danger to life;
- the bulbospinal form in which both the spinal cord and the base of the brain are affected. Survivability for this character is very low.
Some paralysis resolve within a few months of onset, especially when accompanied by rehabilitation. It happens, however, that the damage to the nervous tissue is so extensive that it exceeds the body’s ability to regenerate.
Post-polio syndrome is also a very specific symptom of poliomyelitis. It occurs after 25-30 years in people who have had the infection, even in the form without paralysis. The exact mechanism of this syndrome is unknown. It is associated with a significant deterioration of muscle efficiency, their faster fatigue, chronic pain in muscles and joints, and sometimes problems with speaking, swallowing and breathing.
Treatment of poliomyelitis
There is no treatment for any form of poliomyelitis. Only conservative treatment is applied, consisting in rehabilitation in the hope of maintaining the muscles in at least a satisfactory degree of efficiency. However, a lot depends on the degree of damage caused by the virus.
Consequently, the burden of fighting poliomyelitis shifts to vaccination. In Poland, vaccination against polio is compulsory and is used in children 3-4 months old. The dose is repeated twice in the child’s second year of life.