North Texas

Researchers Learn More About The Mysterious Paralysis Affecting Children

The federal government says it has very few answers about the mysterious polio-like illness sickening kids across the United States, but the country's top researchers actually do know a lot about the disease and what causes it, according to NBC News.

There've been more than a 60 confirmed cases of acute flaccid myelitis this year, but many more suspected cases, including a handful in North Texas.

NBC News reports that doctors who've been studying children with AFM have gathered evidence that enterovirus D68 is the main cause of the current AFM outbreak. 

Experiments have shown that EV-D68 can invade nerve tissue, including the spine.

 A team of academic researchers have formed their own network to try to find out why very few children actually develop paralysis from the virus that is harmless in more than 99 percent of people it infects.

In the meantime, the CDC hasn't consistently found EV-D68 in confirmed cases and they're still looking at other possible causes.

EV-D68 was believed to be the cause of a similar outbreak of the polio-like illness in 2014.

Kingston Robinson, of McKinney was diagnosed with tranverse myelitis, of which acute flaccid myelitis is a subset.

His doctor at the time, Dr. Benjamin Greenberg, told NBC 5, "one of the things that is unique about this variant of transverse myelitis is not only will kids be weak, but they're very floppy.  A limb or two or four will be like wet spaghetti."

Dr. Greenberg, associate professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center and director of the Transverse Myelitis and Neuromyelitis Optica Program at Children’s Health, added, "are we going to see this virus year after year, and if it causing paralysis, then we need to do something about the virus itself."

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