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Mike Mitka

JAMA. 2006;296:1718-1719.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the Salk vaccine, which signaled the end of the poliomyelitis epidemic. In the half-century that followed, polio has been virtually eliminated worldwide. With such positive news, it is perhaps unsurprising that the experience of 920 000 polio survivors in the United States, plus the millions more worldwide, has disappeared from society's view. But many people who survived an initial acute attack of polio are still living, and they continue to face old and new problems associated with the virus along with issues related to aging.

A persistent concern in the polio survivors' community is postpolio syndrome. The condition, first noted in the early 1970s, is marked by a weakening in muscles previously affected by the polio infection as well as in muscles that seemingly were unaffected.

New research suggests that functional decline in polio survivors is equivalent to that . . . [Full Text of this Article]

LESS DECLINE THAN FEARED?



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