Guillain-Barre syndrome: India faces outbreak of creeping paralysis

Last month, a school teacher in the western Indian city of Pune found her six-year-old son upset about homework.

“I had erased some words and asked him to write them. I assumed he was angry and that’s why he was not holding the pencil properly,” she told the Indian Express newspaper.

She never imagined his struggle to hold a pencil was the first sign of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), external, a rare disorder where the immune system attacks nerve cells, causing muscle weakness and paralysis.

Within days, the boy was in intensive care, unable to move his arms or legs. As his condition worsened, he lost the ability to swallow, speak, and eventually breathe, requiring ventilator support. He is now recovering.

The boy is among around 160 reported cases of GBS since early January in Pune, an education and IT hub, ringed by industrial towns and villages. There have been five suspected deaths. Currently, 48 patients are in intensive care, 21 on ventilator, and 38 have been discharged, according to official figures.

GBS begins with tingling or numbness in the feet and hands, followed by muscle weakness and difficulty moving joints. Symptoms worsen over two to four weeks, typically starting in the arms and legs. The reported mortality rate, external varies between three and 13%, depending on severity and quality of health care support.

The outbreak in Pune is being traced to a pathogen called campylobacter jejuni, external, a leading cause of foodborne infections, and the biggest driver of GBS worldwide. The link between the two was discovered in the 1990s in rural China, where the pathogen was common in chickens, and GBS outbreaks occurred every monsoon as children played in water contaminated by chicken or duck droppings.