Two new cases: Children in the US are struck by mysterious polio-like disease

Two children in Chicago have been diagnosed with a rare polio-like illness that is seeing a sudden uptick, mainly in kids, across the US.

Among them is two-year-old Julia Payne, whose symptoms started off resembling those of a common cold.

She is now one of 38 children to develop partial paralysis from acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) in 16 US states so far this year.

The disease most closely resembles polio, but doctors don't know what causes its terrifying symptoms - or how to treat them besides waiting them out.  

'[She was] your typical two-year-old before this,' Julia's mother, Katie, told the Associated Press.

'She went in for an X-ray and she couldn't hold her head up by herself anymore, which was very strange.'

In September, after undergoing a battery of tests, she was finally diagnosed with AFM.   

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn't track AFM in terms of its prevalence, but rather in outbreaks.

Less than a million people are diagnosed in the US annually. 

This suggests the pattern of an infectious disease, but much remains unknown about the condition. 

Because it only comes on once in a while, its symptoms are often mistaken for something else.       

Patients start off having flu-like symptom including sneezing and coughing. This slowly turns into muscle weakness, difficulty moving the eyes and then polio-like symptoms including facial drooping and difficulty swallowing.

Julia has been in the pediatric intensive care unit at Lurie Children's Hospital for weeks now where she is on a respirator and using a feeding tube because she is unable to swallow.

Staff at the hospital say she will be discharged Wednesday and transferred to Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a rehabilitation center where she will face several weeks of physical therapy to regain strength and movement.

An unidentified eight-year-old girl from Chesterton, Indiana is also being treated at Lurie's for AFM. 

Her father says she is experiencing some paralysis and has a partially-collapsed lung.

Full article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6266833/Two-children-diagnosed-mysterious-polio-like-disease-Chicago.html

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