Two children ride their bikes up a hill. (Photo by Jan Woitas/picture alliance via Getty Images) NEW YORK - Health officials remain perplexed by mysterious cases of severe liver damage in hundreds of young children around the world.The best available evidence points to a fairly common stomach bug that isn't known to cause liver problems in otherwise healthy kids.
That virus was detected in the blood of stricken children but — oddly — it has not been found in their diseased livers."There's a lot of things that don't make sense," said Eric Kremer, a virus researcher at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of Montpellier, in France.RELATED: Child’s death linked to mystery liver disease outbreak in kids, WHO saysAs health officials in more than a dozen countries look into the mystery, they are asking:RELATED: Health officials confirm 3 cases of liver inflammation in Minnesota kidsThe U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and investigators around the globe are trying to sort out what's going on.The illnesses are considered rare.
CDC officials last week said they are now looking into 180 possible cases across the U.S. Most of the children were hospitalized, at least 15 required liver transplants and six died.More than 20 other countries have reported hundreds more cases in total, though the largest numbers have been in the U.K.