Last month, a school teacher in the Western Indian city of Pune found his six -year -old son upset about his homework.
“I deleted some words and asked him to write them. I assumed he was angry and therefore didn’t hold the pen rightly,” said Indian Express newspaper.
Never imagined his struggle to maintain a pencil first sign Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS)A rare disorder in which the immune system attacks the nerve cell, causing muscle weakness and paralysis.
In a few days the boy was in intensive care, he could not move his arms or legs. As his condition worsened, he lost his ability to swallow, speech and at the end of his respiratory, demanding the support of the fan. Now he’s recovering.
The boy is among about 160 reported cases of GBS from the beginning of January in full, education and IT center, which have been ringing industrial cities and villages. There were five suspicious deaths. There are currently 48 patients in intensive care, 21 on the fan, and 38 have been released, according to official data.
GBS begins with a tingling or stiffness in the legs and arms, followed by muscle weakness and difficulty in the start of the joints. Symptoms get worse over two to four weeks, usually starting in the arms and legs. Reported mortality rate It varies between three and 13%, depending on the severity and quality of health care.
The outburst of full is followed by a pathogen called Campylobacter JejuniThe leading cause of infections transmitted in food and the largest driver of GBS around the world. The connection between the two of them was discovered in the 1990s in Rural China, where pathogen was common in chicken, and GBS epidemics appeared every monsoon while children played in water polluted with chicken or ducks.
GBS in India is not quite uncommon. Monojit Debnath and Madhu Nagapp, from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience based in Bangalore (Nimhans), studied 150 GBS patients during a five -year period between 2014 and 2019. Their discoveries have shown that over a The third of them tested positively to Campylobacter.
More recently, the outbreaks associated with the pathogen have been reported from all over the world. In the first seven months of 2023 he reported to Peru Over 200 suspicious cases and at least four Deaths of GBSwhich encouraged the Government to declare a national health emergency and strengthening public health measures. Two -thirds of cases are associated with Campylobacter.
In countries with good hygiene, fewer cases of GBS is associated with Campylobacter, and respiratory infections are a major contribution, experts say. There were other triggers. In 2015, Brazil reported on a group of cases of GBS -related cases with the Zika virus. Vaccines can rarely start GBS, but allegedly one cuddly vaccine is associated with Several hundred cases of GBS UK 2021.
“Campylobacter is endemic with hundreds of thousands of cases that take place all the time. It always exists in the environment,” Hugh Willison, a neurology professor at the University of Glasgow, told me.
Still, it’s not easy to develop GBS, scientists say.
There is a specific strain of Campylobacter, which has an outer layer coated with sugar, and in rare cases its molecular structure corresponds to the coating of human nerves.
When the patient’s immune system attacks bacteria, it can eventually target nerves – a process called molecular mimicry – leading to GBS. However, a small part of the Campylobacter strain has this coat like a nerve.
“In the PUNEU, SOJ Campylobacter with this molecular feature is likely to circulate, and the increase in infections with this stress, consequently, leads to more GBS cases,” says Prof. Willison.
Most experts estimate that approximately one in 100 strains of Campylobacter carries the risk of GBS, and one of 100 people infected with such stress develops GBS, which makes the total risk approximately one of 10,000.
This creates what Mr. Willison describes as “immunological Russian roulette”, which drives “acute neurological tsunami” that breaks through the peripheral nervous system. Once the immune response stops, the attack is decaying – but the body needs time, medical care and support for damage to damage.
What makes things worse is that there is no cure for GBS.
In GBS, the body produces antibodies against Campylobacter, which then attack nerves. Doctors use “plasma exchange”, a process that filters blood to remove harmful antibodies, along with intravenous immunoglobulin (Ivig), therapeutic antibody obtained from normal blood, to reduce the severity of the disease.
The other is a challenge that there is no test to diagnose GBS. Diagnosis, doctors say, is mainly based on clinical features. It is presented as a form of paralysis that can also cause polio, viruses or a rare neurological disease.
“The diagnosis is a constellation of clinical features. The wrong diagnosis or diagnosis or late diagnosis can happen easy,” says Mr. Willison.
The Indian uneven public health system is a challenge because doctors in rural areas can fight to diagnose GBS. One reason, perhaps, why The teams of the World Health Organization (WHO) are in fullIt cooperates with federal and state health care workers on monitoring, testing and monitoring cases and analyzing trends to support effective treatment.
Authorities say that they explored more than 60,000 houses, picked up 160 water samples and asked people to drink boiled water and eat fresh and clean foods, and do not have “stale food and partially cooked chicken or sheepdog”.
While most cases of GBs around the world originate from insidious poultry, it can be expanded through water, much like a cholera or salmonella, experts say.
Contaminated water used to wash or prepare street foods facilitate the spread of bacteria. It is clear that in the full it circulates the soy campylobacter with characteristic molecular features, which affects a large number of people.
What is not clear is whether it was because of the pollution of the water supply or many people consuming an infected poultry. “We urge people not to panic,” says the advisory health department. But despite the uncertainty, it is easier to say than to do.
