Polio and Post-Polio Syndrome—Bone Diseases

Your bones help you move, give you shape and support your body. They are living tissues that rebuild constantly throughout your life. During childhood and your teens, your body adds new bone faster than it removes old bone. After about age 20, you can lose bone faster than you make bone. To have strong bones when you are young, and to prevent bone loss when you are older, you need to get enough calcium, vitamin D, and exercise. You should also avoid smoking and drinking too much alcohol.

Bone diseases can make bones easy to break. Different kinds of bone problems include

• Low bone density and osteoporosis, which make your bones weak and more likely to break
• Osteogenesis imperfecta makes your bones brittle
• Paget’s disease of bone makes them weak
• Bones can also develop cancer and infections
• Other bone diseases, which are caused by poor nutrition, genetics, or problems with the rate of bone growth or rebuilding

NIH: National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases

• ALP – blood test (Medical Encyclopedia)
• ALP isoenzyme test (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Blount disease (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Bone lesion biopsy (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Bone pain or tenderness (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Bone tumor (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Bowlegs (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Fibrous dysplasia (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Osteomalacia (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Osteopenia – premature infants (Medical Encyclopedia)

Also called: Infantile paralysis, PPS, Poliomyelitis

Polio is an infectious disease caused by a virus. The virus lives in an infected person’s throat and intestines. It is most often spread by contact with the stool of an infected person. You can also get it from droplets if an infected person sneezes or coughs. It can contaminate food and water if people do not wash their hands.

Most people have no symptoms. If you have symptoms, they may include fever, fatigue, nausea, headache, flu-like symptoms, stiff neck and back, and pain in the limbs. A few people will become paralyzed. There is no treatment to reverse the paralysis of polio.

Some people who’ve had polio develop post-polio syndrome (PPS) years later. Symptoms include tiredness, new muscle weakness, and muscle and joint pain. There is no way to prevent or cure PPS.

The polio vaccine has wiped out polio in the United States and most other countries.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• Polio: Information for Parents (American Academy of Family Physicians) – PDF
• Polio: Information for Parents (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) – PDF
• Polio: Information for Parents (American Academy of Pediatrics) – PDF
• Poliomyelitis (Medical Encyclopedia)