NEW YORK – Health officials are investigating nine cases of muscle weakness or paralysis in Colorado children and whether the culprit might be a virus causing severe respiratory illness across the country.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday sent doctors an alert about the polio-like cases and said the germ — enterovirus 68 — was detected in four out of eight of the sick children who had a certain medical test. The status of the ninth case is unclear.
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The virus can cause paralysis but other germs can, too. Health officials don't know whether the virus caused any of the children's arm and leg weaknesses or whether it's just a germ they coincidentally picked up
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/09/27/enterovirus-68-probed-in-paralysis-cases-in-colorado-kids/?intcmp=latestnews
Biology[edit]EV68 is one of the more than hundred types of enteroviruses, a group of ssRNA viruses containing the polioviruses, coxsackieviruses, and echoviruses. It is unenveloped. Unlike all other enteroviruses, EV68 displays acid lability and a lower optimum growth temperature, both characteristic features of the human rhinoviruses.
Epidemiology[edit]Since its discovery in 1962, EV68 has been described mostly sporadically, in isolated cases: six clusters (equal to or more than 10 cases) or outbreaks between 2005 and 2011 have been reported from the Philippines, Japan, the Netherlands, and the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona in the United States.[5] EV68 was found in 2 of 5 children during a 2012/13 cluster of polio-like disease in California.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterovirus_68
100's of cases nationwide now
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