The Virus That Causes Polio-Like Paralysis In Children Has Returned

(CTN News) _ The covid-19 pandemic mostly wiped out a virus that can cause a polio-like paralysis in children.

A surge of cases linked to enterovirus D-68 has been spotted by the CDC. According to past outbreaks, a small percentage of these cases will develop acute flaccid myelitis.

An EV-D68 health advisory was issued over the weekend.

Children polio have been hospitalized for severe respiratory illness and enteroviruses since August 2022 in several parts of the country.

This summer, EV-D68 has been linked to a greater proportion of respiratory illnesses, according to the CDC’s surveillance data.

Most often, EV-D68 causes a mild common cold in children.

Recent years have shown that the infection can sometimes trigger AFM. In about 0.1% of victims, the virus causes a paralytic condition similar to poliovirus.

The EV-D68 virus may have recently mutated in some way to make it more similar to polio and thus more likely to cause AFM, though it is still rare.

People with AFM usually experience sudden limb weakness, slurred speech, and back and leg pain.

People can develop life-threatening paralysis that causes respiratory failure in the most severe cases, while others have permanent paralysis.

It’s likely that AFM is caused by several enteroviruses, but the spike in cases since at least 2014 is closely linked to outbreaks of EV-D68.

Over the past decade, outbreaks of EV-D68 and AFM have happened every two years on schedule, likely because population immunity was low enough for large numbers of kids to get sick at once.

Once the covid-19 pandemic arrived, this pattern, which predicted another AFM outbreak in 2020, changed.

Many people avoided unnecessary social or paralysis physical contact during the first years after contracting covid-19. EV-D68 spread faster than Coronavirus, despite the fact that they slowed the spread of Coronavirus.

Germs like EV-D68 have returned in frequency in recent years. Summer is the season for viruses.

Nearly 700 cases have been confirmed since the CDC started tracking AFM in 2014. AFM outbreaks have occurred around 150 to 200 times.

13 cases have been reported in 2022. In the past, EV-D68 outbreaks have followed AFM outbreaks.

CDC advises doctors to be on the lookout for the condition and to increase their vigilance.

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