100 Paralyzed Children, Each a Mystery

(SOURCE)  Since August, more than 100 children across the country have developed a condition best described in three words no parent ever wants to hear: mysterious, sudden paralysis.

The kids have a median age of 8, and three-quarters of them were previously perfectly healthy. For most, the loss of feeling occurred only on one side of the body.

According to the CDC, in most of the children the paralysis coincided with a nasty cold. That made health workers initially think that the paralysis was caused by a rare virus called enterovirus D68. EV-D68, as it’s known, is a severe respiratory virus that was going around at the start of school last year, and because it’s a relative of polio, it was thought to be causing the polio-like loss of muscle function.