US seeks cause of 100 cases of paralysis

Washington.- Researchers attribute the disease to an enterovirus, but there is still no conclusive evidence

Since August 2014, more than 100 children and young people have suffered a strange paralysis in the US, according to health authorities. The strange case has reached journals such as The Lancet and Nature, which attribute it to an enterovirus, EV-D68. This pathogen is related to the polio virus, but also to the common cold virus.

But the attribution of the symptoms is not yet final. In the study of The Lancet, samples from 12 children were analysed and enterovirus was found in five of them. In fact, Nature quotes John Watson, an epidemiologist at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, who says that the test will be available if enterovirus is detected in the spinal or cerebral fluid of those affected. So far, it has been detected, however, in nasal samples, for example, which is quite logical since enterovirus is very similar to rhinovirus and causes, above all, respiratory infections.

At the moment, the strongest link is in the time sequence: people become infected and then develop paralysis. There have been some cases in France, but no other suspected cases have been described anywhere else.