Polio-like illness has more cases

Posted on February 25, 2014

“About 20” cases of a polio-like syndrome have been identified in California children over the past 18 months, a Stanford University researcher says.

Dr. Keith Van Haren, a pediatric neurologist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, has written a report about five of the early cases.

In that report, which will be presented in April at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting, neurologists said they had identified five patients who developed paralysis in one or more of their limbs between August 2012 and July 2013. All five children had been vaccinated against the poliovirus. Treatment did not seem to help the children regain their motor function (read more about this here)

Samples from two of those children tested positive for enterovirus 68, a rare virus that has been linked to severe respiratory illness in the past.

“About 20 cases have been identified in the U.S. so far, all in California, and all occurring in the past 18 months,” Van Haren