Polio :: essays research papers

Poliomyelitis, infectious virus indisposition of the cardinal nervous system, sometimes resulting in paralysis. The greatest incidence of the disease, also cognise as infantile paralysis, is in children between the ages of five and ten years. The disease was described in 1840 by the German orthopedist Jacob von Heine. In its clinical form it is more prevalent in temperate z ones.Symptoms The virus normally enters the body through the alimentary tract and spreads along nerve cells to contact various parts of the central nervous system. The incubation period ranges from to the highest degree 4 to 35 days. Early symptoms include fatigue, headache, fever, vomiting, constipation, stiffness of the neck, or, less commonly, dissolution and pain in the extremities. Because nerve cells that view muscular movement are not replaced once they are destroyed, poliovirus infection can cause indissoluble paralysis. When nerve cells in respiratory centers, which control breathing, are destro yed, the victim essential be kept a cash in ones chips by an iron lung (see Artificial Respiration). For every paralytic case of poliomyelitis, however, there may be 100 nonparalytic cases.handling Because no drug developed so far has proved effective, discourse is entirely symptomatic. Use of moist heat coupled with physical therapy to piss the muscles was first initiated by the Australian nurse Elizabeth Kenny, and antispasmodic drugs are administered to nonplus muscular relaxation. In the convalescent stage, occupational therapy is used.Disease Control terzetto broad types of the virus have been identified the Brunhilde (type 1), Lansing (type 2), and Leon (type 3) strains. Immunity to one strain does not furnish protection against the other two.Poliomyelitis control was made possible when, in 1949, the American bacteriologist John Franklin Enders and his coworkers discovered a method of growing the viruses on tissue in the laboratory. Applying this technique, the American medical student and epidemiologist Jonas Salk developed a vaccine prepared from inactivated poliomyelitis viruses of the three cognise types. After field trials in 1954 the vaccine was pronounced safe and effective, and grass inoculation began. The American virologist Albert Sabin subsequently developed a vaccine containing attenuated, live polio virus that could be given orally.