A sixth child has died in the United States from a mysterious liver infection — also known as hepatitis — and the number of unexplained cases has risen to 180 in 36 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The latest death was announced Friday in a news conference led by CDC Assistant Director of Infectious Diseases Jay Butler, who said it was reported to the agency on Thursday. He did not specify which state the death occurred in.
In addition to the deaths, 15 of the 180 cases required a liver transplant, Butler reported. The cases all occurred in children under the age of 10, but tended to be of preschool age, with the median age being around 2 years.
The latest US numbers feed into a global phenomenon that is now includes over 600 cases in 31 countries, including 15 deaths. But despite the growing numbers, international health experts are still struggling to understand what’s behind the diseases after eliminating the most obvious possibilities like hepatitis viruses A, B, C, D and E.
Tricky Numbers
In today’s briefing, Butler cautiously noted that while the most recent 180 total cases may seem like a worrying increase from the 109 cases CDC reported two weeks ago, most of the 71 newly reported cases were identified retrospectively and were, in fact, weeks or months have occurred. In fact, only 7 percent of the 180 cases occurred in the past two weeks, Butler said.
He was also careful to avoid the cases being part of an outbreak, noting that the agency is not seeing an overall increase in the number of unexplained hepatitis cases it normally sees. And the 180 cases in the last seven months have not increased geographically or over time. They were fairly evenly distributed across the 36 states, and month-to-month case counts were generally flat, Butler reported.
Although pediatric hepatitis cases are not monitored nationally, the CDC estimates that there are between 1,500 and 2,000 cases each year, according to Umesh Parashar, CDC chief of viral gastroenteritis, who also spoke at the briefing. Butler added that about 30 to 50 percent of these pediatric hepatitis cases go undiagnosed each year. Statistically, the 180 unsolved cases over a period of seven months did not ring any alarm bells.
It’s possible, Butler speculated, that the cases now highlighted were always there and simply weren’t identified and investigated before.
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