Polio-Like Disease Found in Five Children in California

Researchers have found rare, polio-like syndrome in five children in California.

Polio is a crippling, highly infectious disease caused by a virus. Successful vaccination program helped U.S. become a polio-free country in 1979. Researchers have now found children infected with enterovirus-68, a virus known to cause polio-like symptoms.

Human enterovirus 68 or EV-D68 is linked with acute respiratory disease. Recently, there has been a jump in the number of cases associated with enteroviruses. And the disease hasn't just emerged in one region. According to an earlier study, EV-D68 infections have been found in North America, Europe and Asia.

"Although poliovirus has been eradicated from most of the globe, other viruses can also injure the spine, leading to a polio-like syndrome," said case report author Keith Van Haren, MD, with Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "In the past decade, newly identified strains of enterovirus have been linked to polio-like outbreaks among children in Asia and Australia. These five new cases highlight the possibility of an emerging infectious polio-like syndrome in California."

For the study, Van Haren and colleagues looked at the data of the children who were referred to California's Neurologic and Surveillance Testing program between August 2012 and July 2013.

Researchers then analyzed five cases of children who displayed polio-like symptoms. The children included in the study had paralysis of one or both arms and were paralyzed within two days of the viral infection. All the children had been vaccinated against polio and none had Guillain-Barré syndrome and botulism, which can lead to similar symptoms.

Researchers report that two children recently tested positive for enterovirus-68. The team couldn't determine the cause of illness in other children.

"Our findings have important implications for disease surveillance, testing and treatment," said Van Haren in a news release. "We would like to stress that this syndrome appears to be very, very rare. Any time a parent sees symptoms of paralysis in a child, the child should be seen by a doctor right away."

The case report is supported by the McHugh/Sprague Award from the Lucile Packard Foundation and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

The number of polio cases around the world reduced between 1988 and 2012; from 350 000 cases to 223, according to data from the World Health Organization.