Polio-like disease again spreading among U.S. children

An article on Scientific American about the return of acute flaccid myelitis, a polio-like condition that left more than 100 children in the U.S. at least partially paralyzed in 2014, interviews Mark Hicar, assistant professor of pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, who has treated two children with AFM, one in 2014 and one this year. The article notes that both were boys—one age six, one three; each had a common cold–like illness and spiked a fever about a day before they stopped using one leg. The three-year-old improved significantly within the first two days but then plateaued and is now back in the hospital being treated with anti-inflammatory medications, said Hicar, who is hoping the drugs will prevent the boy’s immune response from exacerbating the damage. But data on the efficacy of treatments is so thin, he said, that he is not sure whether the therapy is helping the boy or not.

Read more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poliolike-childhood-muscle-weakening-disease-reappears/