Steve Quayle News Alerts

September 20, 2002
By Marc Kaufman, Washington Post Staff Writer

The West Nile virus has apparently caused six people in Mississippi and Lousiana to develop polio-like paralysis, federal officials reported today.

While medical officials have known that West Nile virus can cause muscle weakness and paralysis in some people, the reports of a polio-like paralysis represent a broadening of the concern. Previously, the most common serious complication from the newly arrived, mosquito-borne disease has been encephalitis.

In most of the paralysis cases, the victims were previously healthy and middle-aged. The extent of the paralysis varies widely, with some victims losing the use of an arm or a leg while several others were forced to use ventilators to breathe, and none has recovered, CDC officials said.

According to James Sejvar, a medical epidemiologist with the CDC, the agency is investigating other cases of "acute flaccid paralysis" in patients with West Nile virus and expects more will be found as the virus spreads.

In a study released today in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a team including Sejvar urged doctors to be alert to the possibility that patients with polio-like symptoms could have West Nile virus. The report said that the symptoms can be confused with Guillain-Barre syndrome and warned doctors against quickly treating for that disease because it could jeopardize patients with the polio-like complications from West Nile virus.

Sejvar said the West Nile-paralysis has generally occurred soon after the patient became sick, and that there is no known way to predict when it will appear or to prevent it. He said that the medical literature has reported incidence of West Nile-related paralysis in the past in the United States and abroad, but that it was associated then with Guillain-Barre.

According to CDC, the number of reported West Nile virus cases has spiked this month to 1,641, with 80 deaths. Although much of the attention has been focused on outbreaks in the deep south, the largest number of cases and deaths has been reported in Illinois. Michigan and Ohio have also recorded more than 100 cases this month.

The Washington region has not been a center of the West Nile epidemic, although there have been 5 reported cases in Maryland, 11 in Virginia and 3 in the District. There have been no deaths reported in the area.

Also today, federal health officials concluded that the West Nile virus most likely can be spread through blood transfusions and organ donations, and they announced they are working to develop and distribute tests that can screen blood donations for the virus.

"Since this transmission by transfusion appears likely, it is likely also that we will need to move toward testing of donor blood," said Jesse Goodman of the Food and Drug Administration. "While the investigation is ongoing, we believe there's sufficient evidence when you put it all together that there likely is a risk."

Goodman couldn't predict when the tests would be available and how much they would cost. But he said intensive discussions are underway between government and industry on speeding the effort.

"What we're trying to do here is jump-start this process . . . so we can get a test as soon as possible," he said.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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