Nine Colorado children have been stricken with muscle weakness or paralysis since Aug. 8, and Colorado health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday they’re investigating a link to concurrent viral outbreaks.
The CDC has issued a national alert for doctors in other states to watch for similar symptoms.
All nine children’s symptoms were preceded by respiratory illness, said Dr. Larry Wolk, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and a pediatrician.
“This is a very small number of patients,” Wolk said. “That’s why we’re asking if there are other cases. People shouldn’t panic.”
The cases were identified between Aug. 8 and Sept. 17 at Children’s Hospital Colorado among children ages 1 to 18 — most from the Denver area. The health department has been working with Children’s for about a week, Wolk said.
“All nine had some kind of lesion show up on their MRIs,” Wolk said.
The CDC advisory says symptoms include limb weakness and “abnormalities of the spinal cord gray matter on an MRI,” or magnetic resonance imaging.
Wolk said he didn’t know how many of the nine children suffered paralysis. And officials don’t know if any paralysis is permanent. He said none of the nine have recovered yet from their symptoms, but he didn’t know if all remained hospitalized.
“Everything from just being limp or having decreased movement all the way to paralysis-like symptoms where the children can’t move have been reported to us,” Wolk said. “Some of these kids are pretty young, so it’s hard to make that diagnosis of paralysis.”
Officials said the children did not experience altered mental status or seizures.
The past two months have seen tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, kids sickened by a rare pathogen called enterovirus 68 as well as the common cold, rhinovirus, Wolk said. But the state doesn’t have firm numbers, because reporting these viral cases is not mandatory because such illnesses are so pervasive.
Officials have test results for eight of the nine children, Wolk said. Four children tested positive for enterovirus 68, and the other four were positive for rhinovirus or another enterovirus.
Eight of nine children have been confirmed to have up-to-date polio vaccinations, a CDC health advisory said.
Wolk said he wanted to emphasize that myelitis, an infection or inflammation of the gray matter of the spinal cord, is “a rare but not unexpected complication” of viral infections.
“We’ve seen this in the past and have studied these kinds of clusters in the past,” Wolk said.
Recent viral outbreaks in Colorado have shown double-digit increases over more typical years.
The enterovirus 68 outbreak associated with severe respiratory illness is nationwide, the CDC reports.
So far this year, enterovirus 68 has been confirmed in 40 states and the District of Columbia, according to the CDC.
The CDC recommends that patients under 21 suffering from acute onset of focal limb weaknesses on or after Aug. 1, with an MRI showing a spinal cord lesion largely restricted to gray matter, should be reported to state and local health departments.
