A team of researchers has published evidence that an enterovirus is to blame for a mysterious neurologic illness that has paralyzed nearly 600 children in the US in the last few years. The study, described in June in bioRxiv and yesterday (October 21) in Nature Medicine, found that nearly 70 percent of children with acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) have enterovirus-specific antibodies in their spinal fluid, compared to just 7 percent without the disease.
“The strength of this study is not just what was found, but also what was not found,” study coauthor Joe DeRisi of the University of California, San Francisco, who is co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub says in a statement. “Enterovirus antibodies were the only ones enriched in AFM patients. No other viral family showed elevated antibody levels.”
AFM was first identified in 2012, and, while still rare, has been on the rise among US children in ...
