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An unknown enemy: Drugs sought against EV-68 as paralysis link is explored

Nature Medicine volume 21, pages 419–421 (2015)Cite this article

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Glaser and her team sent out a bulletin altering local health departments in California to be on the lookout for such cases, and more reports—and more samples—trickled in. Glaser and her colleagues identified 23 cases of mysterious paralysis between January 2012 and June 2014. All tested negative for polio. She wondered whether the cause might be a new insect-transmitted arbovirus, like the West Nile virus that causes encephalitis. But the state lab identified an altogether different pathogen, enterovirus 68 (EV-68), a virus first discovered by the California Department of Public Health more than five decades ago. Although some enteroviruses cause paralysis, EV-68 typically causes respiratory illness.

The discovery didn't prove that the virus had caused the paralysis. In fact, researchers could only find the virus in two of the 19 individuals for which they had samples1. The connection between paralysis and EV-68 in these cases “was a pretty weak link,” Glaser says. Still, many of the patients Glaser identified in California had experienced respiratory symptoms before they developed paralysis, and she suspected that the neurological problems were a rare complication of EV-68 infection.

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Change history

  • 07 May 2015

     The version of the article initially published online on 30 March 2015 (Nat. Med. doi:10.1038/nm.3846, 2015) failed to note Michael Rossmann's affiliation or the involvement of his collaborators, and it incorrectly placed Emory University in Decatur, Georgia, when in fact it is in Atlanta. The errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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  1. Cassandra Willyard is a freelance writer in Madison, Wisconsin.,

    Cassandra Willyard

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Willyard, C. An unknown enemy: Drugs sought against EV-68 as paralysis link is explored. Nat Med 21, 419–421 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.3846

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