Mysterious disease causing paralysis in children, reached record numbers in the US

This year in the United States, a record number of cases of a mysterious disease causing paralysis in children was recorded.

Фото: Depositphotos

It is still not clear why the affected children lose their ability to move the muscles of the face, neck, back, arms or legs. Symptoms appear about a week after the children have a fever and symptoms of a respiratory illness. CBS News.

No one died of this rare disease this year, but last year it caused one death.

Employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that it caused long-term paralysis in many children. Almost half of the children who became ill this year were hospitalized in the intensive care unit and connected to the devices that were supposed to help them breathe.

The disease has been compared to polio, a devastating, paralyzing disease that previously affected tens of thousands of children in the United States each year. These outbreaks stopped after the polio vaccine became available in the 1950s. Investigators of the current outbreak of a mysterious disease have ruled out polio after finding no evidence of the virus in the sick children.

Outbreaks of this mysterious disease can be traced back to 2012, when three cases of paralysis were recorded in California. The first real wave of confirmed illnesses was seen in 2014, when 120 cases were reported. Another large wave occurred in 2016 with 149 cases. This year, 158 cases of the disease have been confirmed.

In 2015 and 2017, rates were much lower, but researchers cannot explain why.

The condition is called acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM. Doctors suggest that it is caused by the virus EV-D68. The 2014 wave of the year coincided with a large number of EV-D68 infections. The CDC has created a group of 16 disease research experts who consider this virus as the main theory.

But the waves of AFM and this virus did not coincide in other years, and testing does not detect the virus in each case of AFM disease. EV-D68 infections are not new to children in the United States; many Americans have antibodies against this virus.

And doctors still can not answer the questions, why this virus suddenly began to cause paralysis, and why mass outbreaks are observed every two years.

Another mystery is that more than 17 countries reported scattered AFM cases, but none of them showed cyclical bursts, as in the United States.

When there was a wave in the USA in September of this year, the number of cases of the disease increased dramatically, and by November it was significantly reduced. CDC officials said last week that the number of diseases reached a record high.

As of December 10, 311 cases of AFM have been reported, but they have not yet been confirmed.

This year, confirmed cases have been spread across 36 states. The state with the highest number of cases is Texas, with 21 children affected, followed by Colorado with 15 cases.

To confirm the disease, it is necessary to perform an MRI that shows damage to the part of the spinal cord that controls the muscles.

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