ACUTE FLACCID MYELITIS REMEMBERING THE POLIO EPIDEMIC AND LOOKING BEYOND By
ALLISON GENTRY FATIMA SATTAR (Editor)
One of the most notable medical achievements of the past century in the United States has been the eradication of polio, a highly infectious viral disease that causes paralysis in young children. There have been several significant polio epidemics throughout the history of the United States, with the peak occurring in 1952, when there were 57,879 cases and 3,145 deaths reported. Jonas Salk’s vaccine, which was developed in 1954 through a trial of nearly two million children, was eventually used to vaccinate children across the United States. Through the widespread implementation of this vaccine beginning in 1955, the number of polio cases decreased rapidly until the disease was officially eliminated in 1979.
Over the course of the past four years, however, there have been a rising number of cases of a poliolike disease of unknown causes in the United States. This viral disease is known as acute flaccid myelitis, a rare but serious infection that affects the gray matter of the spinal cord and can cause severe weakening of muscles within the body. The symptoms for acute flaccid myelitis may develop after a viral infection such as adenovirus or West Nile virus; however, in some cases, there are no clear causes. From 2014 to the present, there have been 386 confirmed cases of acute flaccid myelitis in the United States. To this day, possible causes and treatments for all of these cases remain unknown.
This graph illustrates the number of cases of AFM recorded in the United States from August 2014 to August 2018.
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