Scientists pin possible cause of child paralysis outbreak

Paralysis swept through more than 100 children during the summer of 2014, and scientists claimed the D68 virus was the culprit. Doctors at the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital now think another virus might have been the real reason for the outbreak.
The change in thinking came about after a six-year-old girl was admitted to the hospital in October of 2014. Her right shoulder was drooping and she was having problems using her right hand. She had previously exhibited cold-like symptoms—similar to signs that the other 118 children had shown as well.
A new contender
When tested for causes, an enterovirus came up, but not D68. Rather, she tested positive to enterovirus C105.
“Surprisingly, it came back with this enterovirus C105, which I’ll admit, when it came back, I’d never heard of,” said UVA’s Ronald B. Turner, MD. “It was just described in the last eight or nine years and it hasn’t been seen much around the world. Now, I think you have to be careful with that, because we don’t look for it. And you don’t see what you don’t look for. So it’s possible it’s out there and it’s not being detected because nobody’s sending specimens to be tested in this way.”
According to Eurekalert, Turner has since published a case study detailing the girl’s diagnosis. In it, they noted that only eight of 41 children tested for enterovirus D68 actually had the virus, leading the researchers to believe its identity as culprit arose because of pure coincidence.
“Last fall there was this outbreak of enterovirus D68 disease that was going around the country and mostly causing respiratory symptoms, asthma exacerbations, that sort of thing. Right in the middle of that, there was also an outbreak of acute flaccid paralysis,” said Turner. “Because of the temporal relationship, a lot of people connected those two events and basically assumed that the enterovirus D68 was somehow related to the acute flaccid paralysis.”
However, Turner also emphasized that C105 can’t be linked to the outbreak until researchers analyze the virus more fully.  that more analysis needs to be done before enterovirus C105 is also branded as the cause.
“You can only learn so much from one case. My plea is that we not over-interpret this information,” he said. “It was really just an attempt to say, ‘Hey wait a minute, there are other possibilities for what’s going on with this flaccid paralysis and we need to keep an open mind about this.’“
Thankfully, the six-year-old girl from the case study is reported as doing well. Her right arm weakness has improved and her right hand has regained its strength.
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Follow Susanna Pilny on Twitter @PlinyTheShorter
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