The US seeks the 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 people, including children and young people, have suffered a strange paralysis in the United States, according to health authorities. The strange case has reached magazines such as The Lancet and Nature, which attribute it to an enterovirus, EV-D68. This pathogen is related to polio, but also to the cold.

But the attribution of the symptoms is not yet closed. In the Lancet study, samples from 12 children were analyzed and the enterovirus was found in five of them. In fact, Nature quotes John Watson, an epidemiologist at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, who states that the test will come if the enterovirus is detected in the spinal or brain fluid of those affected. So far it has been detected but in nasal samples, for example, something quite logical since the enterovirus is very similar to the rhinovirus and causes, above all, respiratory infections.

For now, the strongest relationship is in the temporal sequence: people become infected and then develop paralysis. There have been some cases in France, but no other suspects have been described anywhere else.