Mystery Illness Kills Boy, Leaves Young Family Devastated : Medicine: Heart stoppage blamed for 3-year-old’s death; his brother barely survived.

Due to a production error, this story did not appear in its entirety in some Saturday editions. Also, a portion of a story about how Turkey’s earthquake exposed corruption between builders and politicians appeared in some Saturday editions. The entire Turkey story is printed today, beginning on A1.

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A little more than a month ago, Noah Bradley was fixated on monster trucks and “Star Wars.” Not quite 3 years old, he could already write his name and count to 30.

His family’s biggest concern was packing up so that the father, Air Force Capt. Lorenzo C. Bradley III, could make his transfer from Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, to Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.

When Noah’s stomachache and nausea began, the little boy smiled through the discomfort. He even laughed with his father as they watched a video and Darth Vader repeated his favorite lines.

But what seemed like an everyday illness turned into a medical catastrophe a little more than 24 hours later. Noah suddenly died of cardiac failure and his 15-month-old brother Jacob nearly lost his life, too, in a case that has baffled public health officials and UCLA doctors, who said they still don’t know what made the boys sick.

Investigators from Santa Barbara County, the Air Force, the state Department of Health Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to study the case, though they have already ruled out an array of organic and artificial toxic substances as the cause. Health officials said the case poses no public threat.

The boys’ parents continue to struggle with their abrupt, unexplained loss.

“I am optimistic that they will figure it out,” said Angela Bradley, the boys’ mother. “We have to have answers. It just can’t be a mystery for the rest of our lives.”

Investigators said they too hope to explain the illnesses that tore apart a young family, leaving Jacob still recuperating at Los Angeles Childrens Hospital. But even the experts had to concede that such cases sometimes go unresolved.

“We see a fair number of illnesses that we can’t necessarily explain, so not finding an agent that caused this would, unfortunately, not be that unusual,” said Dr. Carol Glaser, a medical officer with the state’s viral diseases lab.

Some obvious suspects in the medical mystery already seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Entero viruses associated with human waste, for example, can cause the kind of heart inflammation that struck the Bradley boys. Such organisms can cause dramatic symptoms in a few people, while having no health impact on most. Testing, however, has revealed no signs of entero viruses.

“We have by no means given up,” Glaser said. “There are some avenues we would like to pursue. It’s possible [the cause] might be in the area of toxins.”

Such an inquiry would have seemed unthinkable in the lives of Noah and Jacob Bradley a little more than a month ago. The healthy, rambunctious brothers lived happily at the sprawling Air Force base with their parents.

Capt. Bradley, 26, had just completed space and missile operations training and the family was packing Aug. 2 for a move to Montana when the flu-like symptoms struck Noah. Later the same day, his father and younger brother came down with the same symptoms.

Intravenous fluids and a shot quickly cured the father but, while Noah was in the waiting room to see a base doctor, his heart stopped.

An ambulance rushed the child to a nearby hospital, where he died. Attention then shifted to the younger brother, whose condition also began to deteriorate. Jacob was shifted from Lompoc to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. Finally, a helicopter flew him to Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA.

There, the toddler’s heart failed, but doctors were able to keep him alive by attaching him to a modified heart-lung machine called ECMO, for extra corporeal membrane oxygenation.

“The machine took over his vital heart functions for a long enough period of time that his own heart was able to recover,” said Dr. James Atkinson, the hospital’s surgeon in chief.

Many difficult days followed. Doctors considered a heart transplant. But they worried that whatever agent attacked Jacob’s heart might also harm a transplanted organ. Jacob’s parents urged the doctors to let their son fight without the operation.

“We knew our son,” said Lorenzo Bradley. “We knew he was scrappy and ornery and he wouldn’t go that easily. We thought he could make it on his own.”

Jacob’s heart eventually regained full function, and he was well enough to be transferred to Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles where, on Friday, he smiled brightly at his nurses and visitors.

The boy walks with a limp from two strokes during his ordeal. But he is expected to be released from the hospital in about a week and to make a complete recovery.

Angela Bradley said she was a health zealot and a “germ freak”--constantly cleaning and spraying disinfectant--even before her sons became sick. Every night, she prayed for their happiness.

Now she hopes for some explanation about what made them so terribly ill, though she said the ordeal has already taught other important lessons.

“We just want other people to remember to cherish every moment and to appreciate everything they have,” said Bradley, 27. “Because you never know when, in a moment, everything can change.”