Polio Research Paper

Nobody has ever discovered completely how it is that polio is spread. The best evidence suggests that the virus is excreted in the stool and passed through hand to hand or hand to mouth contact by people who do not wash their hands properly or often enough. It was during the first few years of the fifties and many years before then, that health department officials

Poliomyelitis (polio) is a disease that attacks the nervous tissue in the spinal cord and the brain stem resulting in paralysis (Document One). Polio is caused by the poliovirus, but it is unknown how this virus is acquired. The virus enters the digestive tract and stays in the intestines for up to eight weeks, and then attacks the lymphatic system, the blood stream and eventually travels to the brain and spine (Document Four). Once it is infected in one’s body, the disease is highly contagious and can be spread through contact of saliva, food, germs, or feces (Document Two). “The poliovirus causes most of its infections in the summer and fall. At one time, summer epidemics of polio were common and greatly feared” (Document Four). This may

Once America’s most feared diseases and causing death and paralysis across the country, thanks to vaccination, there are no reports of polio in the United States.

Immunizations have lowered the morbidity rate over the course of many years. Before vaccines were introduced, during 1900 through 1904, an average of 48,164 cases and 2528 deaths were caused by both severe and mild forms of smallpox in the United States. After the smallpox vaccine was introduced, the disease ceased to stop and the last case to ever be reported was in 1929. Getting vaccinated against the smallpox actually eradicated the disease, meaning it has been wiped out. Next, in 1951- 1954, on average, 16,316 polio cases and 1879 polio deaths were reported each year. Once the polio vaccine was introduced, less that 1000 cases were reported in 1962. As of 1991, wild-type polio viruses have been eliminated from the Western Hemisphere. But

Polio, short for poliomyelitis, is a disease caused by the contraction of the poliovirus. Like influenza, smallpox and cholera, polio is a viral infection. This means that it is a disease caused by the spread of a virus. It spreads rapidly, and usually through person-to-person contact. In addition, this virus can also be distributed through foods or drinks contaminated by infected fecal matter. Although polio is deadly, sometimes, contractors of polio do not show any symptoms. The

It can lead to a loss in muscle movement in the chest, limbs, and throat (“Polio Vaccine”), or even total paralysis (Laidlaw 9). Some symptoms of polio are headaches, a fever, fatigue, muscle pains, and spasms. Most cases of polio start around the age of five. In the United States, there has been a ninety-nine percent decrease in cases of polio since 1988. In the United States the number of polio cases fell from eighteen cases per 100,000 people to fewer than two per 100,000.

The disease poliomyelitis is more commonly known by its alternative name “polio.” The history of this disease dates back into prehistory, but major polio epidemics were not known before the twentieth century. The first clinical description of this disease was provided by a British physician named Michael Underwood, in which he described the disease as debility of the lower extremities. In the 1880s major epidemics started to occur in Europe, then made its way soon after into the United States. The first report of multiple cases was recorded in 1843 and described an outbreak that happened in Louisiana in 1841. The next large outbreak was in Boston in 1893 where there were 26 cases of poliomyelitis. The following year was the first recognized epidemic in the United States which occurred in Vermont with 132 total cases, including 18 deaths. By 1907 there were approximately 2,500 cases of polio reported in New York City alone. By 1910, epidemics of polio were regular events throughout the developed world, mostly in cities during the warmer months. In 1916 there were over 27,000 cases including more than 6,000 deaths due to polio in the United States, with more than 2,000 deaths occurring in New York City alone. Poliomyelitis hit its peak in the 1940s and 1950s; it paralyzed or killed more than half a million people per year.

Poliomyelitis, also commonly known as polio, is a viral infection that, at one point was virtually eradicated in the US (SOURCE). The last major epidemic of polio was in the early 1950's (SOURCE). Polio was characterized in one of three ways: nonparalytic

Poliomyelitis (polio) is an infectious disease caused by the polio virus and is spread from person to person through faecal-oral transmission which means; stool entering the mouth or consumption of food containing stool from an infection person. The poliovirus resides in the intestinal tract and mucus in the nose and throat. Contact with infected respiratory secretions or even saliva can cause poliovirus transmission. This mode of transmission is known as oral-oral transmission. Polio became prevalent in the United States of America (U.S) in the 1940s and 1950s.this was followed by outbreaks of the disease that crippled tens of thousands in North America. Polio eradication is aimed at reducing the global incidence of polio to zero through deliberate efforts to a point that it requires no further control. Polio eradication is to be achieved through interruption of endemic transmission of poliovirus through vaccination. This saw the wide use of the inactivated polio virus (IPV) that was administered orally (OPV); oral polio vaccine.

Parents and children today may have no memory of the dreaded disease called polio, which struck both young and old by the score from the 1930s to the 1950s. School children and parents were as frightened of polio as they were of nuclear bomb attacks on the United States.

Polio is a viral infectious disease that affects many systems of the body and can result with the patient being paralyzed. Majority of the cases had no symptoms and it ran rampant in the U.S during 1952. It mostly affected children, and was a public epidemic, with nearly 58,000 cases being confirmed in a year. Most scientific research about the disease led to dead ends and the clinical trials of earlier polio vaccine left children dead and some of them

Starting as a distinctive rash, smallpox progresses into painful blisters and ultimately ends in permeate disfigurement and often death. This incredibly contagious disease claimed the lives of roughly 300 million to 500 million people in Europe until the 19th century. Thanks to widespread vaccination, the number of American smallpox victims decreased from 100,000 people in 1921, to less than 50 in 1939. Today smallpox is virtually nonexistent, and vaccinations are no longer necessary. Another disease known for its painfully unpleasant symptoms and high mortality rate is Polio. Polio caused more than 15,000 cases of paralysis in the US in the 1950s. After a vaccine was developed and administered rapidly, less than 100 Americans suffered from polio in the 1960s. Since then, there haven’t been any reported cases of Polio originating in the US. When vaccinated at high rates, a population can dramatically

Poliomyelitis, commonly known as “Polio”, is an acute motor disease caused by the poliovirus that targets the anterior horn cells of the human spinal cord, and in severe cases results in acute flaccid paralysis (Alberta Health and Wellness, 2011), which can progress to permanent paralysis. It mainly affects children under the age of five, although individuals of any age may contract it (World Health Organization, 2013 [C]). Historical outbreaks, most prominently the 1916 and 1952 epidemics in the United States, led to the development of two separate vaccines: Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV), and Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV). Although polio has seen over a 99% decrease in cases since 1988 and has largely been eradicated in the

This disease has killed and paralyzed many. One of polio’s fatal symptoms is paralyzing muscles that help you breathe (“Polio Vaccine”).

The poliovirus is one of the most transmittable and most contagious viruses that the human population has come in contact with.  The structure of the poliovirus allows it to be able to bind to motor neuron cells within a host’s body and reproduce quickly. Like all virus’s, the poliovirus