More U.S. Kids Have Recently Been Diagnosed with a Mysterious Paralyzing Illness

(NEW YORK) — More children have been diagnosed with a mysterious paralyzing illness in recent weeks, and U.S. health officials said Tuesday that they still aren’t sure what’s causing it. This year’s count could surpass the tallies seen in similar outbreaks in 2014 and 2016, officials said. Fortunately, the disease remains rare: This year, there have been 90 cases spread among 27 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. It’s not clear what’s causing some children to lose the ability to move their face, neck, back, arms or legs. The symptoms tend to occur about a week after the children had a fever and respiratory illness. Health officials call the condition acute flaccid myelitis. No one has died from it this year, but CDC officials say at least half the patients do not recover from the paralysis and some have serious complications. Polio and West Nile virus have been ruled out. Doctors have suspected the cause might be some kind of enterovirus, which in most people causes cold symptoms. But CDC officials say that’s not clear. The first mysterious wave of paralysis cases in 2014 coincided with a wider spike in illnesses connected to an enterovirus called EV-D68, CDC officials said. But there was no such spike during the waves in 2016 or this year. There’s also a lack of clinical evidence: CDC officials have checked the spinal fluid of about three-quarters of the 90 patients, and found EV-68 in only one. Anoth...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized onetime public health Source Type: news