 Richard L. Bruno
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Richard L. Bruno is chairperson of the International Post-Polio Task Force and director of The Post-Polio Institute at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center. Please e-mail questions directly to him at ppseng@aol.com.
Note: This column is for information purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice.
Q: My mother had polio when she was pregnant with me. At age 35 I began suffering symptoms that match PPS very well. I am wondering if I caught
polio in the womb from my mother.
The simple answer is no; kids inside the womb did not catch polio from their
mothers. During the epidemic years, nearly a thousand women in Los Angeles
and Illinois were studied who developed polio during pregnancy. Not one baby
was born with symptoms even vaguely similar to those of polio. It is thought
that a mother's own antibodies against poliovirus passed to the fetus and
protect against developing polio in the womb.
However, between 1897 and 1956 there were 150 cases of polio reported in
children who were less than six months old. Among these were four instances
of babies delivered with an arm or leg that had obviously been paralyzed by
polio many weeks before birth. It is likely that something very unusual
happened in these four cases. Perhaps the mother was not able to make enough
poliovirus antibodies to protect herself and the baby, her antibodies were
not passed to the baby, or an abnormality of the placenta allowed poliovirus
to infect the fetus.
Polio's Aftermath in Australia
By Mary Westbrook
Australian polio epidemics spread terror along with the virus. During the
1937 epidemic, community fear was so profound that the state of New South
Wales petitioned the Federal Government to quarantine the badly affected
neighboring state of Victoria. When this was refused, the NSW government
stationed police at railway stations, wharves and border crossings, to turn
back children without a medical certificate confirming lack of contact with
polio in the past three weeks.
The island state of Tasmania had the world's second highest ever per capita
rate of polio. When the Queen visited Western Australia in 1954, there was a
ban on shaking her hand or personally giving her flowers. She resided on the
royal yacht instead of Government House and was not served local food.
Click here to read the full article.
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Still, pregnancy and polio was a dangerous combination. The L.A. and
Illinois studies found that pregnant women who developed polio were about
five times more likely to die. The fetus was also at risk. Any severe
illness in a mother that causes a high fever increases the possibility of
miscarriage, and polio was no exception. In the L.A. study, 22 percent of
pregnant women with polio miscarried. This percentage is not higher than in
the general population. And autopsies on miscarried fetuses showed no
evidence of polio infection. However, the doctors who studied the mothers
believed the babies would have lived had it not been for the mothers' polio.
So, the chances of your having caught polio from your mother are
"infinitesimal." If you had, you would have been born with paralysis.
Q: I have attended three of your post-polio conferences in the South and am a member of a large Southern post-polio support group. I was the only African American at those conferences and am the only black person in my
support group. In fact, I've never met another African-American who had
polio. Could it be that few black people got polio?
It has always been amazing to me that I have met only a handful of
African-American polio survivors during the past 18 years as I've spoken to
post-polio conferences across America. It is also remarkable that only about
two percent of the patients treated at the The Post-Polio Institute are
African-American. This poses the fascinating possibility that there is
something about race, something in the genes, that makes some people less
likely to get polio.
In 1935 the U.S. Public Health Service canvassed 200,000 households asking
about polio. The survey found that 265 percent more white than
African-American children had contracted polio. This striking difference
could not be explained by greater poverty among African-Americans. In Hawaii
between 1938 and 1947, whites had almost three times more polio than
Japanese, about four times more polio than Chinese and nearly six times more
polio than Filipino residents. And there's another decidedly genetic factor
associated with polio: The 1935 survey found that 40 percent more males than
females got polio.
There are many ways your genes could have made you more susceptible to
polio. If the immune system were less active or responded less quickly when
the poliovirus entered the bloodstream, you might not as quickly have made
the number of poliovirus antibodies needed to stop neurons from being
infected. An even more intriguing genetic factor is the fact that a
poliovirus receptor (PVR) must exist on a neuron in order for poliovirus to
get inside that neuron and do damage. It may be that the PVR gene, which is
on chromosome 19, is more active in white males and least active in
African-American females. Of course there are a host of non-genetic factors
that determine who will get polio: the strength of the poliovirus, how much
virus gets inside of you, as well as both physical and emotional stress.
And, as evidenced by your own experience and the fact that polio is still
epidemic in Africa, neither African-Americans nor Africans are immune from
polio. One of the promises of genetic engineering is the possibility of
turning off the PVR gene. Without poliovirus receptors there could be no
poliovirus infection of neurons and no need for a polio vaccine.
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