Physicians Office News Briefs - Continued
weakness in their children should see their
pediatrician right away, Van Haren advised.
Physicians in the state should notify the
California Department of Public Health any time
they see a child with acute flaccid paralysis that
is not due to diseases that affect the nervous
system, such as botulism or Guillain-Barre
syndrome, he added. Carol Glaser, M.D., chief of
encephalitis and the special investigations
section in the California Department of Public
Health emphasized to HealthDay that only a
very small number of cases have been
identified, with no clear common cause. "Health
care providers have been asked to send
information about similar cases so that we can
determine whether or not there is anything
unusual about these cases," she said.
F
irst Human Death From
Novel H10N8 Virus
Reported
A novel reassortant H10N8 virus
has been identified in a human patient,
according to an article published online Feb. 5
in The Lancet.
HaiYing Chen, M.D., from Nanchang City
Disease Control and Prevention in China, and
colleagues obtained and
analyzed clinical,
epidemiological, and virological
data from a 73-year-old female
patient with influenza A H10N8
virus infection.
The researchers found that the
patient presented with fever and
was admitted to the hospital on
Nov. 30, 2013, where she
developed multiple organ failure
and died nine days after onset of illness. In the
tracheal aspirate specimen obtained seven
days after illness onset, a novel reassortant
avian influenza A H10N8 virus was isolated.
Sequence analyses found that all genes of the
virus were of avian origin, and six internal
genes were from avian influenza A H9N2
viruses. An avian-like receptor binding
preference was indicated by the aminoacid
motif GlnSerGly at residues 226 to 228 of the
hemagglutinin protein. The original tracheal
aspirate samples contained a mixture of
glutamic acid and lysine at residue 627 in PB2
protein, associated with mammalian
adaptation. The virus was found to be sensitive
to neuraminidase inhibitors. It was established
that the patient had visited a live poultry
market four days before onset of illness.