[h=1]?Medical mystery? still stumps doctors amid outbreak of poliolike paralysis[/h] By ALAN BAVLEY
The Kansas City Star
01/28/2015 10:36 PM
01/28/2015 10:38 PM
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Researchers once thought they might have an explanation for why this Joplin, Mo., boy and more than 100 other children from across the country have developed this poliolike paralysis since August.
But as they collect more evidence, the cause has become less and less certain.
?In fact, it?s a medical mystery,? said Mary Anne Jackson, chief of infectious diseases at Children?s Mercy Hospital.
Jackson and other doctors at Children?s Mercy were among the first in the nation to recognize that a virus called enterovirus D68, or EV-D68, once considered rare, was causing an outbreak of often severe respiratory illnesses among children last summer.
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Researchers suspected a link between EV-D68 and the paralysis because there were initial signs that some of the paralyzed children had been exposed to the virus. EV-D68 is a distant cousin of the polio virus.
But as researchers have sifted through the evidence, they haven?t been able to establish that connection.
?Today, there is no association? between EV-D68 and the paralysis, Jackson said. ?We just don?t have any evidence that these two things go together.?
Jackson wouldn?t say that EV-D68 has been ruled out entirely as a cause, but research into these paralysis cases has broadened considerably.
