Researchers have identified a mysterious polio-like disease in five children in California. The emerging infection that mimics the worst symptoms of polio was found over a one-year period by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco.
Article continues below
The United States had experienced a polio epidemic in the 1950s, when it paralyzed up to 20,000 people a year. The U.S. became polio-free after a vaccine was introduced.
Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan are the three countries in the world where the crippling disease is still endemic, but vigorous vaccination efforts had brought down the number of polio cases considerably in all these regions, WHO claims.
"Although poliovirus has been eradicated from most of the globe, other viruses can also injure the spine, leading to a polio-like syndrome," said case report author Keith Van Haren, Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
"In the past decade, newly identified strains of enterovirus have been linked to polio-like outbreaks among children in Asia and Australia. These five new cases highlight the possibility of an emerging infectious polio-like syndrome in California," according to the report's co-author Emanuelle Waubant, the University of California-San Francisco.
Van Haren said he and his colleagues noticed several of these cases at their medical centers and decided to look for similar cases in California. They reviewed all polio-like cases among children aged 2 to 16, whose samples referred to California's Neurologic and Surveillance Testing program from August 2012 to July 2013. Cases were included in the analysis if the children had paralysis affecting one or more limbs with abnormal MRI scans of the spinal cord that explained the paralysis.
The five children experienced paralysis of one or more arms or legs that came on suddenly and reached the height of its severity within two days of onset. Three of the children had a respiratory illness before the symptoms began. All of the children had been previously vaccinated against polio virus.
The children were treated, but their symptoms did not improve and they still had poor limb function after six months. Two children tested positive for enterovirus-68, a rare virus previously associated with polio-like symptoms. The doctors could not diagnose the cause in the remaining three children. ■