{"id":84079,"date":"2018-10-26T06:03:15","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T13:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/the-main-suspect-behind-an-ominous-spike-in-a-polio-like-illness"},"modified":"2018-10-26T06:03:15","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T13:03:15","slug":"the-main-suspect-behind-an-ominous-spike-in-a-polio-like-illness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/the-main-suspect-behind-an-ominous-spike-in-a-polio-like-illness","title":{"rendered":"The Main Suspect Behind an Ominous Spike in a Polio-Like Illness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-main-suspect-behind-an-ominous-spike-in-a-polio-like-illness.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A common virus seems to be behind a puzzling condition that\u2019s paralyzing children, but uncertainties remain.<\/p>\n<p>A s the summer of 2014 gave way to fall, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.childrenscolorado.org\/doctors-and-departments\/physicians\/m\/kevin-messacar\/\">Kevin Messacar<\/a>, a pediatrician at Children\u2019s Hospital Colorado, started seeing a wave of children with inexplicable paralysis. All of them shared the same story. One day, they had a cold. The next, they couldn\u2019t move an arm or a leg. In some children, the paralysis was relatively mild, but others had to be supported with ventilators and feeding tubes after they stopped being able to breathe or swallow on their own.<\/p>\n<p>The condition looked remarkably like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Poliomyelitis\">polio<\/a>\u2014the viral disease that is on the verge of being eradicated worldwide. But none of the kids tested positive for poliovirus. Instead, their condition was given a new name: acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM. That year, <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/cid\/article\/63\/6\/737\/2196733\">120 people<\/a>, mostly young children, developed the condition across 34 states. The cases peaked in September and then rapidly tailed off.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2018\/10\/afm-polio-like-illness-thats-paralyzing-children\/573982\/\">https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2018\/10\/afm-polio...en\/573982\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A common virus seems to be behind a puzzling condition that\u2019s paralyzing children, but uncertainties remain. A s the summer of 2014 gave way to fall, Kevin Messacar, a pediatrician at Children\u2019s Hospital Colorado, started seeing a wave of children with inexplicable paralysis. All of them shared the same story. One day, they had a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}