Polio-Like Illness Outbreak Could Return To NY In 2020: CDC

NEW YORK — While New York and other states continue to battle the coronavirus, another potentially life-threatening illness is poised for another outbreak, and this one mainly affects children, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC on Tuesday announced it expects another wave of acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), a rare but serious neurological illness that can cause paralysis. The illness most recently made headlines in 2018.

Outbreaks of the polio-like illness typically peak every two years between August and November, the CDC said, and officials expect 2020 to be another peak year.

In 2018, 12 New York were positively diagnosed with AFM, according to the CDC.

Another two were diagnosed in New York in 2019. So far in 2020, there have been no confirmed cases in the state, but across the U.S., there have been 16 confirmed cases in 10 states this year, and 38 reports of patients under investigation (PUIs).

Since 2017, two U.S. patients with AFM have died — one in 2017 and another in 2020.

The CDC warned that although AFM is rare, doctors and parents should be vigilant for signs of the illness, which can progress quickly over the course of days or even hours and can lead to permanent paralysis or life-threatening respiratory failure, even in otherwise healthy patients, according to the CDC.

"Parents and doctors should suspect AFM in patients with sudden limb weakness, especially during August through November," the CDC said, cautioning parents and doctors to watch for recent respiratory illness, fever, neck or back pain, or any neurologic symptom.

"As we head into these critical next months, CDC is taking necessary steps to help clinicians better recognize signs and symptoms of AFM in children," said CDC Director Robert Redfield.

AFM can be caused by a variety of germs, including several viruses, according to the CDC, including both polio and non-polio enteroviruses, West Nile virus and viruses in the same family, and adenoviruses. Environmental toxins and genetic disorders may also cause AFM, according to the CDC, which said AFM is only one of a number of conditions that can result in neurologic illness with limb weakness. Oftentimes, however, a cause for AFM cannot be identified.

In 2018, most cases were in children (94 percent), and most patients (86 percent) had AFM onset during August through November. Most patients also had a fever, respiratory symptoms or both approximately six days before the onset of limb weakness. Other common early symptoms were difficulty walking, neck or back pain and limb pain.

Thomas Clark, deputy director of the CDC's Division of Viral Diseases, said doctors should remain wary and evaluate patients for suspected AFM quickly.

"During the COVID-19 pandemic, this may require adjusting practices to perform clinical evaluations of patients by phone or telemedicine," Clark said, but added that doctors "should not delay hospitalizing patients when they suspect AFM."

Written by Shannon Antinori