PRI – Jared Goyette
“Imagine you have a pre-adolescent son or daughter who comes down with what seems like a nasty case of the flu. Then, without warning, a new, more troublesome symptom develops: Your 8-year-old daughter collapses, unable to move her leg; your 6-year-old son suddenly stops moving his right arm. It lays limp by his side. It’s a nightmare scenario for any parent — and a sad reality for some. Those two scenarios actually happened to children who contracted the EV-D68 virus in the United States last fall. The enterovirus spread through the country in the second half of 2014. For most children, it seemed merely like a bad case of the flu. But for a group of about 100 kids, it came with a severe symptom: a polio-like paralysis in the arms and legs. EV-D68 isn’t a new virus, but paralysis had never been reported with the virus before. Doctors are still baffled by what caused it, and the children who experienced it have yet to fully recover.”(more)