美国官员担心残疾儿童的情况可能正在蔓延（打印版）

美国官员担心残疾儿童的情况可能正在蔓延（在线收听）

US Officials Worry Condition Disabling Children May Be Spreading

One morning last autumn, four-year-old Joey Wilcox did not feel right when he woke up. The boy had lost feeling on the left side of his face.

It was the first sign of a much more serious condition.

Three days later, Joey was in a hospital, unable to move his arms or legs or sit up. Tests failed to identify a cause. Doctors feared he might lose the ability to breathe.

“It’s devastating,” his father, Jeremy Wilcox of Virginia, told the Associated Press. “Your healthy child can catch a cold — and then become paralyzed.”

Joey survived, but still suffers some of the effects. He was one of 228 confirmed victims of acute flaccid myelitis, known as AFM, in the United States last year.

AFM is a rare, mysterious and sometimes deadly paralyzing disorder. The number of cases seems to rise and then fall every other year. The condition is beginning to worry public health officials because it is striking more and more children.

Anthony Fauci is head of the U.S. government’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He said AFM appears similar to polio, another paralyzing disease. Polio affected only small numbers of people for centuries before it infected larger populations in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Fauci prepared a report about AFM that appeared earlier this month in the medical publication mBio.

Fauci said it is unlikely the disease will become as bad as polio, which struck tens of thousands of U.S. children every year before a vaccine became available in the 1950s. Yet he warned: “Don’t assume that it’s going to stay at a couple of hundred cases every other year.”

AFM cases have been reported in other countries, including Canada, France, Britain and Norway. But the size and shape of the U.S. outbreaks seem very different. More than 550 Americans have been struck over the past 10 years. The oldest was 32 years old. More than 90 percent of the patients were children, most around four, five or six years of age.

Many had a higher than normal body temperature and what seemed like a common viral infection. They seemed to recover, but then developed paralysis. In some cases, it started in small ways — for example, a finger that suddenly would not move. Some went on to lose the ability to eat or breathe.

Many families say their children have regained at least some movement in affected body parts, but stories of complete recovery are unusual. Health officials cannot say how many recovered completely, partly or not at all, or how many have died. Yet the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, says deaths are rare.

Scientists suspect the disorder is being caused mainly by a virus that experts identified more than 55 years ago. They believe the virus may have changed to become more dangerous, but have yet to prove that.

Doctors have been using a number of treatments, such as antiviral medications and antibiotics. But CDC officials say there is no clear evidence they work.

A growing number of experts agree that physical therapy does make a difference. A leading expert on the condition is Benjamin Greenberg of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

“These kids can continue to recover very slowly, year over year. ... It’s driven by how much therapy they do,” he noted.

Joey Wilcox’s father said his son made huge improvements that way. Joey can run and use his arms. Still, the muscles in his right leg and shoulder are weak, and he still has left-side facial paralysis.