Maria Sonnenberg, For FLORIDA TODAYApril 9, 2015
In 2013, Olivia Martinez started vomiting and feeling dizzy. It was bad enough that her family rushed her to the emergency room at Wuesthoff Medical Center Rockledge. Nothing out of the ordinary was discovered with the pre-teen. The cause behind another similar episode a couple of weeks later also proved puzzling.
On Martin Luther King Day in 2014, Olivia, now 14, suddenly became paralyzed on her left side. Visits to a pediatrician and a neurologist landed the girl at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, where an MRI and a spinal tap were performed to determine one of two possible reasons for the paralysis: a tumor or multiple sclerosis.
Multiple sclerosis turned out to be the culprit.
Virtually unknown as a pediatric disorder before the early 2000s, pediatric MS still remains a rarity.
“We had one case in 32 years,” said Dr. William Knappenberger of Pediatrics in Brevard.
MS typically strikes adults. There is no cure for this progressive disease that often incapacitates patients through the loss of brain function and inability to walk. Because children have more years ahead of them than adults, they are more likely to experience decline earlier.
Although it remains rare, with only about 8,000 pediatric patients currently suffering from the disorder, there has been increased recognition of the problem from the medical field and a sprinkling drug companies have instituted trials to find medication to help afflicted youngsters lead normal lives. Olivia is part of a five-year clinical trial for pediatric MS at the University of Alabama.
“Clinical and MRI criteria for the diagnoses had been evolving in adults over the last 10 years and can be applied to children,” said Dr. Scott Gold, a neurologist with Health First Medical Group.
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