Another article:
Paralysis cluster cases linked to polio-like virus
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Paralysis-cluster-cases-linked-to-polio-like-virus-6169033.php
"And at the same time, two hospitals — one in Colorado and one in California — reported small clusters of sudden-onset paralysis, with some of the patients testing positive for the same virus. Among the children eventually with paralysis, many have shown some improvement in symptoms but none has recovered fully.
But no one could say for sure that Enterovirus 68 was causing the paralysis. Baffling scientists and frustrating doctors, some of the affected children tested positive for the infection, but many did not.
Chiu’s team collected blood, tissue and fluid samples from 25 patients who were part of the paralysis clusters and used highly sensitive equipment to search for any traces of enterovirus. Most of those patients had never tested positive for enterovirus, but Chiu was able to detect Enterovirus D68 in 12 of them.
A full genomic analysis of the viruses Chiu found showed that almost all of them were of a mutated strain known as B1, which was only identified about five years ago. The strain has similar features to both the virus that causes polio and another virus — Enterovirus D70 — that’s also known to cause neurological problems.
“It’s a small study, and we’re not showing causality yet, but we’re really inching that way,” said Dr. Emmanuelle Waubant, a UCSF neurologist who treated some of the first California patients with sudden-onset paralysis but was not part of Chiu’s research team. “This work is definitely going to encourage investigators to go back to the bench and try to really understand better the neurological complication potential of this virus.”
Chiu and other scientists said they don’t yet have the “smoking gun” evidence they need to say for certain that Enterovirus D68 is the culprit in the paralysis cases. He wasn’t able to find any virus in the cerebral spinal fluid of affected patients, which would be a logical place for the pathogen if it’s causing neurological problems.
But viruses that cause paralysis — including polio-causing viruses — are notoriously tricky to locate, scientists say. And the fact that Chiu and other scientists haven’t been able to find any other possible causes of illness is another point in favor of Enterovirus D68."
