Thread: Polio research and treatment

Fight against polio bein' ramped up...

Global leaders vow to rid world of polio
Sun, Oct 30, 2011 - CROSSROADS: Commonwealth leaders, as well as Bill Gates, pledged millions of dollars more to eradicate the disease, which threatens to spread back across the globe

World leaders yesterday added their weight to a push to eradicate polio, pledging millions of dollars in new funds to bring an end to the crippling and potentially fatal disease. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who is hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, said her country would spend A$50 million (US$53.5 million) over four years toward the global fight. “While polio remains anywhere in the world it is a threat to anyone,” she told a joint news conference with leaders from Britain, Canada and two of the world’s four polio endemic countries — Pakistan and Nigeria — by her side. “We are here today to demonstrate our commitment to ending the fight against polio, that is ending polio for all time,” Gillard said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his country would commit further investments in polio surveillance and immunizations without giving a figure, while philanthropist Bill Gates pledged US$40 million in new funding. “We’re at a crossroads,” Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said via a video message, adding that recent cases in China highlighted the risk of polio spreading back across the globe. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said he would raise annual spending on fighting polio from US$17 million to US$30 million from next year. Jonathan said while the disease had been reduced by 75 percent in the African nation, it remained present in some states and had started to make a comeback over the past year.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, whose government in January pledged ￡40 million (US$64.5 million) to fight the disease, said the world was in sight of eradicating the disease. “Today for the vast majority of countries, polio has been eliminated and the harrowing images of children in iron lungs banished to the past,” he said. “But for all this progress we haven’t quite finished the job and the truth is that nearly eradicated is just not good enough.” Cameron said the world now ran the danger of going backwards on ending the disease, which mainly affects children. “If we fail to get rid of polio we run the risk of seeing it spread back to countries from which it has been eradicated,” he said. Polio remains a challenge for the 54-nation Commonwealth, with three of the world’s four endemic countries — India, Nigeria and Pakistan — members. Afghanistan is the fourth state in which the highly contagious disease has not been eradicated.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said he was concerned that polio had re-emerged in his country, which shares a long, rugged and porous border with war-ravaged Afghanistan. “This situation is totally unacceptable,” he said, adding that medical staff often had difficulty reaching those in need given the difficult terrain and the problem of insurgents. In areas where the oral vaccine was most needed, he said, there were people who were “so fanatical they don’t let the doctors into this area.” “But we are trying our best,” he added. Gillard said it was possible the disease, which in 1954 held Perth in its grip, preventing Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II from staying onshore during her maiden visit Down Under, could be ended forever. “Change is possible,” she said. “This is an issue which within our lifetime was a problem right around the world. Now we are in grasping distance of the end of polio worldwide and that is what we are determined to do.”

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/worl.../30/2003517050

India eradicatin' polio...

India marks milestone in fight against polio
Thu Jan 12,`12 – India will celebrate a full year since its last reported case of polio on Friday, a major victory in a global eradication effort that seemed stalled just a few years ago.

If no previously undisclosed cases of the crippling disease are discovered, India will no longer be considered polio endemic, leaving only Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria on that list. "This is a game changer in a huge way," said Bruce Aylward, head of the World Health Organization's global polio campaign. The achievement gives a major morale boost to health advocates and donors who had begun to lose hope of ever defeating the stubborn disease that the world had promised to eradicate by 2000. It also helps India, which bills itself as one of the world's emerging powers, shed the embarrassing link to a disease associated with poverty and chaos, one that had been conquered long ago by most of the globe.

The government cautiously welcomed the milestone as a confirmation of its commitment to fighting the disease and the 120 billion rupees ($2.4 billion) it has spent on the program. "We are excited and hopeful. At the same time, vigilant and alert," Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said in a statement. Azad warned that India needed to push forward with its vaccination campaign to ensure the elimination of any residual virus and to prevent the import and spread of virus from abroad. The polio virus, which usually infects children in unsanitary conditions, attacks the central nervous system, sometimes causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and, in some cases, death.

With its dense population, poor sanitation, high levels of migration and weak public health system, India had been seen as "the perfect storm of polio," Aylward said. Even some vaccinated children fell ill with the virus because malnutrition and chronic diarrhea made their bodies too weak to properly process the oral vaccine. In 2009, India had 741 cases. That plunged to 42 in 2010. Last year, there was a single case, an 18-month-old girl named Ruksana Khatun who fell ill in West Bengal state Jan. 13. She was the country's last reported polio victim. Part of the sudden success is credited to tighter monitoring that allowed health officials to quickly hit areas of outbreaks with emergency vaccinations. Part is also attributed to the rollout of a new vaccine in 2010 that more powerfully targeted the two remaining strains of the disease.

Under the $300 million-a-year campaign the government runs with help from the WHO and UNICEF, 2.5 million workers fan out across the country twice a year to give the vaccine to 175 million children. They hike to remote villages, wander through trains to reach migrating families and stop along roadsides to vaccinate the homeless. Philanthropist Bill Gates, whose foundation has made polio eradication a priority, hailed India's achievement as an example of the progress that can be made on difficult development problems. "Polio can be stopped when countries combine the right elements: political will, quality immunization campaigns and an entire nation's determination. We must build on this historic moment and ensure that India's polio program continues to move full-steam ahead until eradication is achieved," he said in a statement.

More http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120...as_india_polio

Polio still a problem in third world...

Polio fight at tipping point: WHO
Sat, May 26, 2012 - MAKE OR BREAK: An Emergency Action Plan aims to boost vaccinations in the three remaining endemic countries, but there is a funding gap of US$945 million

The international group tasked with ridding the world of polio said on Thursday it was shifting to “emergency mode” as the fight enters its final stretch. Polio remains endemic in just three countries — Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan — after India was taken off the list in February. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) said accelerating efforts now could wipe out polio for good — if not, its spread to other countries would remain a constant risk. If it is stamped out, polio would be the second infectious disease affecting humans after smallpox to be completely eradicated.

The GPEI, spearheaded by the WHO and UNICEF among others, says failure could lead within a decade to 200,000 children being paralyzed each year. Aside from the health benefits, it also estimated savings of US$40 billion to US$50 billion by 2035 by taking into account cash spent on campaigns and treatments, and gains in productivity. “Polio eradication is at a tipping point between success and failure,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said in a statement. Polio is an infectious disease which affects mainly children under five and can cause paralysis in a matter of hours. Some cases can be fatal. The GPEI’s Emergency Action Plan aims to boost vaccination coverage in the three remaining endemic countries, but it said it has a 50 percent funding gap of US$945 million through the end of next year.

The group hopes a resolution being considered by health ministers this week in Geneva, Switzerland, declaring polio eradication “a programmatic emergency for global public health” would mobilize the political commitment and resources needed to make up the shortfall. Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan saw an unexpected rise in cases last year, according to experts, who said conflict, political change and poor infrastructure all make vaccination programs difficult. Outbreaks in recent years in China spread from Pakistan, and in West Africa transmitted from Nigeria, highlight the continued threat of resurgence. “The polio map looks better than it ever has before, [but] at the same time the program is a little bit on the edge because the funding support needed to get that final mile isn’t really there,” said Jay Wenger of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which supports the GPEI.

India was taken off the list of polio endemic countries by the WHO on Feb. 25 after more than a year passed with no fresh cases. Worldwide, polio cases have dropped by more than 99 percent since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 infections to 1,352 reported in 2010. “We know polio can be eradicated and our success in India proves it,” president of GPEI partner Rotary International Kalyan Banerjee said. UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake said the group’s efforts were at risk until every child was fully immunized against polio. “We have come so far in the battle against this crippling disease. We can now make history — or later be condemned by history for failing,” Lake said.

Polio fight at tipping point: WHO - Taipei Times

Might one day help repair crippling damage to central nervous system...

Scientists Find Key Protein in Limb-Nerve Repair
June 22, 2012 - Researchers have identified a protein that's essential for the regrowth of nerves responsible for movement and sensation in injured limbs. They hope the finding might some day make it possible to repair crippling damage to other parts of the central nervous system.

Scientists have long known that severed nerves in the arms and legs have the ability to regenerate after they have been been surgically reattached. But until now, the mechanisms underlying that regrowth have been poorly understood. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, discovered that a protein, called dual-leucine zipper kinase (DLK), plays a key role in repairing the long, thin nerve fibers, or axons, that extend several meters from the nerve cell body within the spinal cord to so-called peripheral nerves in the limbs.

Developmental biology professor Aaron DiAntonio, who studies how the nervous system responds to injury, says that when a peripheral nerve is damaged, DLK signals the nucleus of its nerve cell - the nerve's "brain" in effect, at the other end of the axon in the spinal cord - to turn on its regeneration program. In their experiments with mice, DiAntonio and his team discovered that when DLK is not present, the injury message is not relayed to the nerve cell body, its regeneration mechanism is not turned on and axonal regrowth is stalled.

DiAntonio believes this new understanding of DLK's role opens up a range of possibilities for repairing nerve damage not just in the limbs but throughout the central nervous system. "The first place one might be able to apply it would be in the peripheral nervous system. So, we just have to turn on something that already exists," DiAntonio says. "Bigger picture, longer term, of more importance if it worked, would be in the central nervous system, where first we would have to ask, 'Is it just a non-funtional nervous system?' And if it is, how would we turn it on?"

The researcher notes that the DLK nerve repair mechanism does not work in other nerves throughout the central nervous system, since damage to the spinal cord usually results in paralysis. Instead, the researcher believes, the central nervous system's role may be simply to monitor and relay DLK's damage signals from peripheral nerves. "And if that's the case, then if we can - and we don't know how to do this yet - but if we could figure out how to turn on this injury-signalling system now that we've identified it, we can look to see if it's in the central nervous system and are there ways to activate it," he says.

Source

Polio still a bane in third world countries...

Health Experts: One Last Push Needed to Eliminate Polio
September 03, 2012: The three countries where polio is still endemic - Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan - are conducting aggressive immunization campaigns to vaccinate more children against the disease. Experts say with India now polio-free and the total number of cases at the lowest level ever, this is an opportunity to change history and irradicate the disease entirely. To reinforce that commitment, many world leaders will be meeting in New York this month.

The oral polio vaccine has cut the number of polio cases worldwide by 99 percent since 1988. For the past 10 years, though, eliminating that last percent has remained a challenge. Even though the total number of cases has declined, experts say every time they have knocked the virus out in one country, they have seen it pop up in another. “We have the highest population immunity throughout the entire world right now, and we are really talking about just a few districts and a few countries with a population that has been missed for a fairly long period of time,” said Ellyn Ogden is worldwide polio eradication coordinator for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Dr. Liam Donaldson, Britain's Chief Medical Officer, who is head of the World Health Organization's Independent Monitoring Board for polio eradication, spoke via Skype, and said the board is especially worried about Nigeria. “So our good news is mixed with continuing concerns," said Donaldson. "The numbers were coming down, but over the last year we have seen a worrying increase in Nigeria. Polio in Nigeria isn’t just a problem for the population of Nigeria. A lot of the outbreaks that have occurred in other parts of Africa have been fed from epicenters in Nigeria, so that’s why it’s very important not just for Nigeria but for other parts of Africa, as well.”

Donaldson said polio eradication programs are not on track to stop polio virus transmission by 2012. While polio eradication is urgent, Ogden said these last remaining reservoirs, such as Nigeria and Pakistan, make it difficult to put a date on success. “It may not happen in the time frame that we are thinking or in the budget that we are thinking, it may take longer and cost more, but I think the effort and the nearness merit additional investments by donors and partners that it's still too early to give up on this ship," said Ogden. Donaldson said that with 125 cases reported so far this year, one final push is needed to get polio eradication over the finish line.

Source

Uncle Ferd says is God gettin' `em fer all dat spam emails dey been sendin' us...

Polio Surges in Nigeria
September 28, 2012 — Polio is again on the rise in Nigeria and doctors said the entire region should be on alert. An alarming number of new cases have been found in the north, where authorities are already dealing with the unrest caused by the militant group Boko Haram. Health officials warn that even a few cases of polio can lead to a devastating outbreak.

These young men say that polio not only robbed them of the use of their legs, but of their ability to work for a living. They say they beg for money in this Abuja market for food and school fees. ​​“I believe that getting polio eradication is one of the smartest allocations of resources that the world can make," said billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. "The world is coming together to do something truly amazing -- protect every single child everywhere from this crippling virus.” On Thursday in New York, Gates spoke to world leaders, calling for a renewed commitment to polio eradication, saying $2 billion yearly will be enough to wipe the disease off the face of the planet by 2018.

On Thursday in Nigeria, 20-year-old Mohammad Shehu was seated on a wooden slat with wheels. His thin, useless legs were folded underneath him. He pushed himself through the markets, calling for spare change to pay for food. Shehu said he was one of three boys in his town to get polio when he was about four years old. As he spoke, two friends crowd around him. One young man wais also seated on wooden slat, with pink flip-flops on his hands. The other was propped up on a single good leg and a crudely-made crutch. The friends said they have never been to a doctor, and they don’t know why their legs don’t work. Health workers say it is undoubtedly polio, a disease that can kill or cripple. This year, all but three countries in the world are polio-free, but the disease is spreading in Nigeria.

There have been 90 new cases reported this year, including 13 since September 5. Frank Mahoney, Centers for Disease Control Chief Health Officer for Polio Response says these numbers may seem small, but it’s a big deal. "One of the things people don’t remember, since the eradication program began, the case counts have remarkably gone down so very few people are getting paralytic polio like it used to be," said Mahoney. "And so if the program were to fail, and we don’t eradicate polio the number of children that would get paralytic disease would certainly increase. So that’s the big concern. If we don’t complete the job, polio will come back and there will be many, many cases." Mahoney said the rise in polio in northern Nigeria is particularly worrying because nomadic life-styles and cross-border trade are common there, and the disease could spread to other countries. Northern Nigeria has also been struggling with an Islamist insurgency in recent years, and Mahoney says the threat to health workers is partially responsible for the recent surge in polio cases. Health workers also struggle with access to remote, transitory communities, he says.

Polio is preventable with a vaccine, but there is no cure. Spokesperson for the State Minister of Health, Tashikalmah Hallah, says health workers struggle with fear and rejection of the vaccine in many communities, and the government is working to convince people that the vaccine is not dangerous for children. “There are some that still reject it. If vaccinators approach them, they’ll say, ‘No.’ But on this issue, with the help of traditional rulers as well as religious leaders within the communities, that case of rejection has gone down," said Hallah. As he spoke, Nigerian leaders and officials, including President Goodluck Jonathan, were in New York, partially to meet with leaders like Bill Gates on strategies to combat the rise of polio in Nigeria, and its continued presence in Pakistan and Afghanistan. At the same time, the three young polio victims in the Abuja market decided to take a break from begging and use their earnings, in bills worth 1-30 cents, to have a small lunch.

http://www.voanews.com/content/polio...a/1516673.html

Earlier polio is consider a disease which is incurable people who are suffering from this disease will have to live rest of their life like handicap.But after the development in medical science there are some prevention measures which can treat this problem before it start affecting kids.

Polio almost gone the way of smallpox...

Polio Mostly Eradicated Globally
November 15, 2012 - But pockets of the disease remain in South Asia and Africa

The global scourge of polio has been virtually eradicated, reaching historically low numbers this year. But pockets of the disease remain in South Asia and Africa because of the refusal of some parents to immunize their children. International public health officials counted 177 polio cases worldwide for the first ten months of this year. That’s a drop from just over 500 cases in 2011. Public health officials credit the drop to successful immunization campaigns against the illness, which attacks the nervous system and can cause partial or total paralysis. The malady has disappeared from most countries where it was once epidemic. For example, in India, there have been no cases of polio reported in two years.

But in neighboring Pakistan and Afghanistan, and in Nigeria, West Africa, reservoirs of the viral illness remain. Experts say that is due to the refusal of many parents to vaccinate their children against the infection. Anita Zaidi is head of pediatrics at Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan. She says intensive public health efforts are underway to vaccinate children against polio. But she says the gains are fragile in some areas and among some ethnic groups, particularly among the country's Pashtun community.

Zaidi says seventy-four percent of Pashtun children go unvaccinated because many parents believe the immunization is harmful. “They believe that it can cause sterility in their children or that it’s a conspiracy to sterilize Muslim populations so that their population growth falls, or they believe in the ..value of a vaccine so they think it’s not harmful but it won’t do anything so why take it," she said. Polio is acquired through contact with feces-contaminated water. Often, Zaidi says, infected children don’t develop symptoms right away so they are unaware that they are exposing other children to the disease. This scenario is common in very dense urban slums, where the availability of clean water is low.

But polio is easily preventable with a series of oral vaccines beginning in infancy. Zaidi says the key to a successful vaccination campaign in these pockets of polio infection is to engage members of the community to help. “So that is you have a refusal, [so] you get somebody from that community that you’ve built up trust with, that the community has built up trust with, and you get them to talk to the family," she said. Pediatrician Anita Zaidi presented a progress report on polio eradication efforts at a meeting this week of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Atlanta, Georgia.

http://www.voanews.com/content/polio...y/1547133.html

Polio is problem not for the country but also to the world. The information presented in this post also presented few facts in thsi favor which has helped people in this reference in effective manner.

Progress in reversing paralysis...

Nose cell transplant enables paralysed dogs to walk
18 November 2012 - Scientists have reversed paralysis in dogs after injecting them with cells grown from the lining of their nose.

The pets had all suffered spinal injuries which prevented them from using their back legs. The Cambridge University team is cautiously optimistic the technique could eventually have a role in the treatment of human patients. The study is the first to test the transplant in "real-life" injuries rather than laboratory animals. In the study, funded by the Medical Research Council and published in the neurology journal Brain, the dogs had olfactory ensheathing cells from the lining of their nose removed. These were grown and expanded for several weeks in the laboratory.

Treadmill

Of 34 pet dogs on the proof of concept trial, 23 had the cells transplanted into the injury site - the rest were injected with a neutral fluid. Many of the dogs that received the transplant showed considerable improvement and were able to walk on a treadmill with the support of a harness. None of the control group regained use of its back legs. The research was a collaboration between the MRC's Regenerative Medicine Centre and Cambridge University's Veterinary School.

Professor Robin Franklin, a regeneration biologist at the Wellcome Trust-MRC Stem Cell Institute and report co-author, said: 'Our findings are extremely exciting because they show for the first time that transplanting these types of cell into a severely damaged spinal cord can bring about significant improvement. "We're confident that the technique might be able to restore at least a small amount of movement in human patients with spinal cord injuries but that's a long way from saying they might be able to regain all lost function. ' Prof Franklin said the procedure might be used alongside drug treatments to promote nerve fibre regeneration and bioengineering to substitute damaged neural networks.

Partial repair