In early April, when word began to circulate that hospitals in the United Kingdom were seeing unexplained hepatitis cases in very young children, some physicians and researchers on this side of the Atlantic experienced a moment of déjà vu.

Kevin Messacar and colleagues at Children’s Hospital Colorado found themselves remarking on how reminiscent the unfolding investigation was of a medical mystery they’ve been enmeshed in for the past eight years — acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, a polio-like condition in children.

Meanwhile, Carlos Pardo, the co-principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health study into the natural history of AFM, started fielding queries from hepatologists at Johns Hopkins Medicine, where he teaches, about what kinds of samples they should be collecting from suspected hepatitis cases.

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