State of Research Problem: Post-polio Syndrome

After reviewing several articles on the topic of post-polio syndrome (PPS), I noticed that many of the articles were addressed to nurses, healthcare professionals and doctors. Verite Reily Collins appeared most frequently from the journals Nursing Standard and Practice Nurse in the ProQuest database. The articles I found mainly focused on physical therapies that would be beneficial to PPS patients that have problems with walking and mobility. Most of the individuals that had paralytic poliomyelitis from the 1950’s to the 1970’s now have a 20-50% chance of getting PPS, therefore this is a recent medical discovery. Post-polio syndrome is not recognized as a diagnosis when a patient complains about their legs feeling like jelly when they get out of bed or stiffness after a long walk because polio is a forgotten disease. These articles inform nurses and medical professionals about the condition to make them aware that complaints of muscle fatigue and weaknesses from patients 40+ may be a result of polio, a great epidemic of the 1950's.

Currently there are no medical treatments or preventions for post-polio syndrome therefore it was difficult for me to find any information on many tests and studies. Although, I did find one study that explained how intravenous immunoglobulin is a treatment option for patients with post-polio syndrome. It is found that patients with post-polio syndrome have increased proinflammatory cytokines in the cerebrospinal fluid which suggests an inflammatory response in the CNS. There were also signs of inflammation in affected muscles. The group that was doing this study hypothesizes that since there is inflammatory in the muscles and CNS, intravenous immunoglobin could benefit patients with post-polio syndrome. This test showed improvement only in a 6 month period but more long-term data is required.

Since this is a newly recognized syndrome, there is little to know about medical and neurological treatments. Hopefully in the future, as more PPS patients are recognized, scientists will come up with a solution to eliminate this problem.