Top Health Official Issues New Warning on Rare Polio-Like Disease

Braden Scott gives a thumbs up as he pauses while practicing on the piano in Tomball, Texas on Friday, March 29, 2019. Braden was diagnosed with the mysterious syndrome called acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, in 2016 and was paralyzed almost completely. But since then he has recovered much of his muscle function. His parents believe a lot of it has to do with thousands of hours of physical therapy.  DAVID J. PHILLIP / AP

cbsnews.com - Associated Press - April 2, 2019

. . . acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, a rare, mysterious and sometimes deadly paralyzing illness that seems to ebb and flow on an every-other-year cycle and is beginning to alarm public health officials because it is striking more and more children.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it may bear similarities to polio, which smoldered among humans for centuries before it exploded into fearsome epidemics in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Fauci, who published a report about the disease Tuesday in the journal mBio, said it is unlikely AFM will become as bad as polio, which struck tens of thousands of U.S. children annually before a vaccine became available in the 1950s.

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CLICK HERE - REPORT - mBio - Acute Flaccid Myelitis: Something Old and Something New