Testing confirmed that the children in California “definitely do not have polio,” Van Haren said.
“The cause of most of these cases is not known. Some clinical and laboratory features, such as the pattern of inflammation seen in the spinal cord on MRI, are consistent with a viral process,” said Glaser.
Van Haren suspects the culprit is an enterovirus. That is a family of viruses that includes polio but also the milder hand, foot and mouth disease, common in infants and children.
Unfortunately while there’s a vaccine for the polio virus, “we don’t have vaccines for the other enteroviruses,” Van Haren said.
“In the past decade, newly identified strains of enterovirus have been linked to polio-like outbreaks among children in Asia and Australia,” he said. The California cases highlight the possibility of an emerging infectious polio-like syndrome in California.
While there haven’t been reports of the illness outside California, Van Haren thinks that’s only because no one is looking for it. He believes once doctors nationwide begin to, they’ll find other cases.
“My goal is to get the word out to other neurologists, to make them aware of this,” he said.
The Stanford group will be presenting a case report at the American Academy of Neurology meeting in Philadelphia in April.
Tomei wants parents to be aware of this new outbreak because it took so long for doctors to think of polio or polio-like diseases in Sofia’s case.
