State health authorities have confirmed a 10th case of paralysis-like symptoms in a Colorado child, an outbreak state and federal officials say might be linked to concurrent viral outbreaks.
The 10th child is at Children’s Hospital Colorado, where the other nine children were diagnosed, said Dr. Larry Wolk, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and a pediatrician.
At a news conference at the hospital Monday, Children’s doctors said it is too soon to know whether the afflicted kids will recover from the paralysis or how long that recovery might take.
And they’re no closer to understanding why Colorado appears to be the focus of the ailment.
Dr. Chris Nyquist, medical director of infection prevention and control at Children’s, said the affected group — kids averaging 8 years old — provides fertile ground for the spread of viruses, especially at this time of year.
“You have a new strain of virus circulating in a susceptible population that likes to spread things back and forth to each other. It’s really a perfect storm for spreading viral illness through school settings, day care settings and really from the middle of the nation throughout the rest of the nation,” Nyquist said. “We really can’t say this is something specific to Colorado’s environment.”
Doctors emphasized that it remains uncertain whether the muscle weakness is connected to the viral outbreak.
The Colorado cases were identified between Aug. 8 and Sept. 17 among children ages 1 to 18 — most from the Denver area.
Eight of the nine children originally diagnosed with what Wolk called myelitis, an infection or inflammation of the gray matter of the spinal cord, were tested for viral outbreaks. Four children tested positive for enterovirus 68, and the other four were positive for rhinovirus or another enterovirus.
There was no information given for the 10th child.
Dr. Joyce Oleszek, who specializes in pediatric rehabilitation medicine, said there are no cases where the children are completely unable to move, just varying degrees of muscle weakness, difficulty swallowing, difficulty breathing, weakness in the neck and trunk, and difficulty walking.
She said it was too early to know whether the paralysis is permanent.
“Only time will tell,” she said.
The parents of one of the 10 Colorado children affected by the illness said their daughter came down with respiratory symptoms seven weeks ago, but they didn’t take her complaints very seriously.
By the end of August, though, a fever surfaced and then got worse until “she was sicker than I’ve ever seen her,” said the girl’s mother, who agreed to talk on condition her daughter’s identity would be protected.
The girl’s left arm weakened. She couldn’t cross the monkey bars anymore or steer her bicycle. When she played the piano, her left hand suddenly struggled to touch the keys.
When she wasn’t better by Labor Day, her parents took her to see a doctor and learned of the similar symptoms that had struck other Colorado children.
The girl, a Denver grade-schooler, still suffers from the illness. And though she never was paralyzed, the prognosis for her left arm is unclear. She is undergoing physical therapy now and is stable.
Despite her daughter’s hospitalization in mid-September, her mother said, “we also count our blessings.”
“It could have been a lot worse.”
Doctors still don’t understand how the illness is attacking the body, said Dr. Sam Dominguez, a microbial epidemiologist at Children’s. And they remain concerned that they may see more cases emerge.
It will probably take weeks to determine whether enterovirus was the cause of the paralysis, Dominguez added, but doctors may never know.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a national alert for doctors in other states to watch for patients suffering from limb weakness accompanied by lesions on the spine.
“Parents shouldn’t panic,” Nyquist said.
She pointed out that millions of children are being infected with enterovirus 68 across the nation and have nothing more than simple cold symptoms.
“Doing those things you can do for your children in the beginning is really the most important thing for parents to focus on — and when to go get health care,” Nyquist said.
Difficulty breathing or walking or weakness in a limb are all warning signs that parents should seek medical care, regardless of whether there are respiratory symptoms.
Nyquist noted that Children’s Hospital had seen 4,021 kids with severe respiratory illness in the emergency room or in urgent care between Aug. 18 and the past weekend. Of those, about 10 percent were admitted to the hospital — a higher than usual number for this time of year.
Elizabeth Hernandez: 303-954-1223, hernandez@denverpost.com or twitter.com/literally_lizzy
Staff writer David Olinger contributed to this report.
