Ontario public health and Ontario Medical Association (OMA) have recently announced another viral epidemic attack. “Since September 17, 2014, more than 300 specimens from Ontario have been submitted to the National Microbiology Laboratory for testing for Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), and more than 30 have been positive… Among laboratory confirmed cases of EV-D68, several cases of Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP)* are being investigated in the past weeks in Ontario.”

This is not the first time that this virus strain attacks humans in an epidemic. Human enterovirus 68 (EV-D68) was first isolated from samples obtained in California in 1962 from four children with pneumonia and bronchiolitis. Between 1970 and 2005 only 26 clinical isolates of EV-D68 were reported in the USA, representing 0.1% of all clinical EV isolates. Over the past few years, other outbreaks in Japan, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Finaland, Italy, France, Africa, as well as several clusters in the USA, have occurred. The clinical presentation of EV-D68 infections in these outbreaks has ranged from mild illness to complications requiring hospitalization and, in rare instances, death. In all reports, children represented the majority of symptomatic infections. In several clusters, this virus has created some novel genetic variants. Moreover this virus has been reported to have shifted its seasonality from the fall and winter to the summer and early fall in temperate zones!

While until now, EV-D68 has been associated mostly with respiratory infections, the current outbreak in Ontario, Canada causing Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) is a new occurrence. Ascancers, viruses such as enteroviruses of different strains, e.g. Coxsackie virus and EV-D68 do not only cause acute infections, but the long aftermath of their invasions will take years or generations to come! Therefore it is imperative that the medical societies and authorities start to prevent such epidemic by perhaps the proper vaccinations and do not take the matter superficially!

Dr.Mostafa Showraki, MD, FRCPC                                                               Lecturer, University of Toronto,School of Medicine,Author: “ADHD:Revisited” Book “adhdrevisited.com”/”medicinerevisited.com”

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