[ad_1]
When Elizabeth, the 4-year-old daughter of Heather Storrie, had a mild cough last May, Storrie was not worried.
"She had already had a cough before, she had already caught a cold – but that never really improved," said the 33-year-old housewife.
Afterwards, Elizabeth lost her appetite, started having her head spinning and caught a fever. His neck became stiff and sore, the right side of his face sagged and his words were scrambled. When her parents took her to the doctor quickly, she had to lie on the floor of the car because it hurt too much to sit in her car seat.
It turned out that Elizabeth had a mysterious, rare and deadly disease, closely linked to polio, called acute flaccid myelitis, said the girl's pediatrician, Dr. Diane Arnaout of Cook's Children's Medical Center,
The hospital treated three patients in northern Texas this year for acute flaccid myelitis (AFM). Arnaout said she could not say much about the other two cases because of privacy legislation, but both patients suffered severe neurological damage.
A fourth patient at Cook Children is being examined as another possible case of MFA by the Centers for Disease Control. Patients in Collin and Dallas counties are treated in other hospitals.
The CDC said it was actively investigating the disease and urging health care providers to be vigilant.
The CDC has confirmed 362 cases since an outbreak in Colorado in 2014, and 38 so far this year, including eight in Texas. Almost all of them were children, says the CDC.
No pathogen has been systematically detected in patients with MAF. The cause of the disease is still unknown.
According to the CDC, symptoms usually begin with sudden weakness of the arms or legs and loss of muscle tone and reflexes. Some people will also have a sagging face, difficulty moving their eyes, difficulty swallowing and speech problems.
In some patients, the muscles that support breathing may become so weak that a ventilator is needed. In rare cases, neurological complications can lead to death.
"Terrifying for any parent"
On the morning of June 4, Elizabeth's parents took her to Arnaout's office in panic. Fearing meningitis, the girl asked an ambulance to take her to the emergency room, where an MRI exam was ordered.
During the MRI, the radiologist entered the MRI room to examine the images produced while Elizabeth was still in the camera, which, according to Arnaut, shows to which point the staff is dealing with his state of emergency.
The images revealed an inflammation throughout the length of the girl's spinal cord, caused by a virus attacking her brainstem, said Arnaout.
The first few days after Elizabeth's diagnosis were the scariest, Storrie said.
"Any parent, when you are told that your child has a neurological disorder, let alone a very rare neurological disorder, that there is no treatment, that it is possible that" she can not breathe alone or walk on it. clean, it's terrifying for any parent, "she said.
"I have never seen this before; I do not know any pediatrician who has seen this before. I was shocked, "said Arnaout, who treats Elizabeth since her birth.
"Frankly, I have a 4 year old at home and I could not help but put myself in those parents' shoes. I do not think I slept all week because I was so worried about her. Children with this condition often end up becoming quadriplegic, even dead or under ventilation. I was terrified by the next few days and what they held.
The doctors had little to do except to support the girl during the first days. Remarkably, she began to improve, said Arnaout. She spent 28 days at the hospital, including her fifth birthday. Now she is recovering four hours a week, mainly to recover the range of motion in her right arm.
"She resumes her duties and if you read about the AFM, most children decline, decline and decline, and that's where they stay," she said. "But Elizabeth has shown a remarkable recovery of much of the function in her arm, shoulder, neck and face."
Storrie said, "We just started praying as soon as we got the diagnosis and every day at the hospital, when we saw that it was not getting worse and when we saw at which point the doctors were happy not to be under ventilation. and that she was still fighting her legs, still fighting, I think that gave us hope.
Elizabeth's case is one of the best scenarios, added Arnaout, adding, "She still can not lift her right arm behind her shoulder, nor move the right side of her neck as well as she did before. She really had a smile for a few months.
Possible cause of AFM
Although no specific virus has been identified as responsible for AFM infections, an enterovirus called EV-D68, a close relative of the polio virus, is suspect, according to the CDC.
"Viruses have always attacked people's nervous systems in the same way, but we have not seen lots of viruses appearing like this before 2014," said Arnaout.
"For me, as opposed to an environmental cause, or perhaps a genetic cause, I think it's contagious, because look at how it comes in small amounts," she said.
In addition, 80% of infected children had fever and had symptoms similar to those of an early respiratory disease, she said.
But Elizabeth has not been tested positive for EV-D68.
Arnaout said that the AFM could prove to be quite similar to West Nile virus, which causes no symptoms in many patients, but can prove debilitating or fatal for a few.
While online anti-vaccination outlets such as NaturalNews.com and The Vaccine Reaction have blamed children's polio vaccines, Arnaout and the CDC say this claim is not supported by the evidence.
"There is absolutely no evidence that the AFM is caused by vaccination," said Arnaout. "In fact, many of the American children who have suffered from MFA have not been vaccinated. In addition, the AFM follows a seasonal pattern – late summer and early fall – quite remarkable. Why would vaccine-related diseases follow this pattern?
"I do not believe that there is a link at all," said Arnaout. "We saw a lot more of this kind of paralysis before the time of the polio vaccine. On the contrary, this horrible disease reminds us that the polio vaccine has made this kind of thing very rare. "
Texans for Vaccine Choice, a group that advocates for parents to choose whether or not to vaccinate their children, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
[ad_2]
Source link
