What are the symptoms of polio?

Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a disabling and life-threatening disease caused by the poliovirus. The virus spreads from person to person and can infect a person's spinal cord, causing paralysis (can't move parts of the body).
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Symptoms
  • Sore throat.
  • Fever.
  • Tiredness.
  • Nausea.
  • Headache.
  • Stomach pain.
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How do u know if u have polio?

Doctors often recognize polio by symptoms, such as neck and back stiffness, abnormal reflexes, and difficulty swallowing and breathing. To confirm the diagnosis, a sample of throat secretions, stool or a colorless fluid that surrounds your brain and spinal cord (cerebrospinal fluid) is checked for poliovirus.
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What are the symptoms of polio in adults?

Early symptoms of polio are like those of influenza (flu) and last about two to 10 days:
  • Fatigue.
  • Fever.
  • Headache.
  • Neck stiffness.
  • Pain in the arms and legs.
  • Vomiting.
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What does polio do to a person?

Polio is a viral disease which may affect the spinal cord causing muscle weakness and paralysis. The polio virus enters the body through the mouth, usually from hands contaminated with the stool of an infected person. Polio is more common in infants and young children and occurs under conditions of poor hygiene.
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How long does polio last for?

How Long Does Polio Last? People who have milder polio symptoms usually make a full recovery within 1–2 weeks. People whose symptoms are more severe can be weak or paralyzed for life, and some may die. After recovery, a few people might develop "post-polio syndrome" as long as 30–40 years after their initial illness.
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Poliomyelitis or polio, Causes, Signs and Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment.



Does polio still exist?

Polio is still endemic in three countries, i.e., Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan and is eradicated from the rest of the world. Pakistan is considered as the exporter of Wild Polio Virus (WPV) with highest number of polio outbreaks among endemic countries.
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What are the 3 types of polio?

There are three wild types of poliovirus (WPV) – type 1, type 2, and type 3. People need to be protected against all three types of the virus in order to prevent polio disease and the polio vaccination is the best protection.
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What is polio called now?

According to the World Health Organization, only 22 cases of polio were reported worldwide in 2017. However, recent reports of children exhibiting a polio-like paralytic condition has sent health officials and researchers scrambling for answers. The condition is called acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM.
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How did people get polio?

Poliovirus can be transmitted through direct contact with someone infected with the virus or, less commonly, through contaminated food and water. People carrying the poliovirus can spread the virus for weeks in their feces. People who have the virus but don't have symptoms can pass the virus to others.
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Where did polio originally come from?

The first epidemics appeared in the form of outbreaks of at least 14 cases near Oslo, Norway, in 1868 and of 13 cases in northern Sweden in 1881. About the same time, the idea began to be suggested that the hitherto sporadic cases of infantile paralysis might be contagious.
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Why does polio affect the legs?

Related to this is the possible shortening of the limb. In a growing child, bone grows as a result of the muscle pull on it and/or weight bearing. Therefore, many who contracted polio as a growing child may have one arm or leg or foot that is shorter and smaller than the non-affected/less affected limb.
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Can polio come back in old age?

Post-polio syndrome is a group of potentially disabling signs and symptoms that appear decades after the initial polio illness. These signs and symptoms usually appear between 30 to 40 years after having polio. Infection from the polio virus once caused paralysis and death.
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Can polio be cured once you have it?

There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented. Polio vaccine, given multiple times, can protect a child for life.
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Can you have polio without knowing?

Symptoms of polio

Polio symptoms generally appear between 3 and 21 days after infection. However, many people infected with poliovirus have no symptoms and may not even know they are affected.
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Is there a test to see if you had polio?

There's no specific test to diagnose post-polio syndrome. Diagnosis is based on a medical history and physical exam, and exclusion of other conditions that could cause the signs and symptoms.
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Can polio be treated with antibiotics?

There are no special medicines or antibiotics that can be used to treat a person; the only treatment is supportive care. Does past infection make a person immune? Yes. Once someone has been infected with the poliovirus, he or she is immune, but only to the specific type of polio virus he or she had.
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What president was affected by polio?

Roosevelt was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down. He was diagnosed with poliomyelitis. In 1926, Roosevelt's belief in the benefits of hydrotherapy led him to find a rehabilitation center at Warm Springs, Georgia.
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Is polio an airborne disease?

Sometimes poliovirus is spread through saliva from an infected person or droplets expelled when an infected person sneezes or coughs. People become infected when they inhale airborne droplets or touch something contaminated with the infected saliva or droplets.
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Why does the polio vaccine last a lifetime?

Measles is an example of a stable virus that is unlikely to replicate, so scientists could predict that immunity would last a long time, which it does." Smallpox and polio, highly contagious viruses that were almost eradicated through vaccination, are also stable with low mutation rates.
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What animal does polio come from?

The discovery by Karl Landsteiner and Erwin Popper in 1908 that polio was caused by a virus, a discovery made by inoculating macaque monkeys with an extract of nervous tissue from polio victims that was shown to be free of other infectious agents.
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Is polio now called Guillain Barré?

They were renamed. Measles has been renamed roseola, fifth disease, etc; Polio has been renamed Guillain Barre, transverse myelitis, coxsackie, MS, cerebral palsy (we actually use more respirators today than we ever did iron lungs by the way it is just that iron lungs were too expensive and dangerous to keep using);
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What does the polio virus look like?

Poliovirus is a rather small and simple virus. It is composed of a shell, or capsid, made of protein, as shown. The poliovirus capsid is about 30 nanometers in diameter. Within the capsid is the information to make new virus particles – a single molecule of ribonucleic acid, or RNA.
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Who is most at risk for polio?

Polio (poliomyelitis) mainly affects children under 5 years of age. 1 in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Among those paralysed, 5% to 10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.
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Can you get polio twice?

One possibility is that the polio virus becomes active again after decades of lying dormant in the victim's cells. Another possibility involves impaired production of hormones and neurotransmitters in brain.
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Is there a vaccine for polio?

Inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) is the only polio vaccine that has been given in the United States since 2000. It is given by shot in the arm or leg, depending on the person's age. Oral polio vaccine (OPV) is used in other countries. CDC recommends that children get four doses of polio vaccine.
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