United States: Flu-like virus that sometimes causes paralysis in children is circulating in the U. S. and experts fear another wave of polio-like diseases.
Now, wastewater samples have found a steep increase in a particular enterovirus known as D68 that in some situations can cause AFM. The illness is neurological and characterized by severe weakness of the arm and leg muscles. It most often happens in children, mainly those that are still young enough to continue growing.
As reported by the NBC news, “Currently, we are finding EV-D68 nucleic acids in wastewater across the country now and the density is rising,” Boehm concluded, who is also the program director of WastewaterSCAN, a nonprofit monitoring network and senior faculty of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.
That’s the first clue to suggest that the nation might see an increase in AFM this year, said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and author of “Crisis Averted: The Hidden Science of Fighting Outbreaks.” “The second clue,” she said, “is that the time of year is right.” They’ve never identified a specific season for AFM, but September has been the biggest month.
Enteroviruses are an everyday virus, if there is such thing; anyone who was probably had a common flu probably had an enterovirus. More often than not, the viruses will give flu-like symptoms like a runny nose, cough, headache, and general “meh” feeling there is a newer strain of the enteroviruses known as D68 that began causing more severe issues the year 2014 when the U. S first saw a dramatic increase in AFM in children. In that year alone, 120 children were diagnosed of the disease.
As for the paralysis there is no cure or specific intervention that can be done. Despite years of rigorous physical therapy, quite a number are left with serious impairments which affect their lives.
Since then, sporadic cases have been reported, with a few dozen per year On the other hand, the large waves of AFM have been alternating every two years with 153 in 2016 and 238 in 2018.
This particular pattern stopped in the year 2020 when the nation went into the lockdown because of the Covid pandemic and drastically reducing the viral spread and that year just the 32 cases were logged and the spread of D68 picked up again in year 2022 as the lockdowns were lifted.
Curiously a rise in the AFM cases didn’t follow.
We saw the viruses that was previously driving the AFM cases, but we didn’t see the AFM cases which are associated with it said Dr. Kevin Messacar who is an infectious disease specialist at the Children’s Hospital Colorado and who treated some of the earliest AFM cases didn’t follow.