Threatening syndrome in kids linked to Covid-19

US SCIENTISTS are working to understand a rare, life-threatening inflammatory syndrome in children associated with exposure to the new coronavirus by quickly assembling clinical trials and patient registries.

Cases were first reported in Britain, Italy and Spain, but now doctors in the US are seeing clusters of kids with the disorder, which can attack multiple organs, impair heart function and weaken heart arteries.

This emerging syndrome, which may occur days to weeks after a Covid19 illness, reflects the surprising ways that this entirely new coronavirus infects and sickens its human hosts.

At least one child in Britain has died. No children are believed to have died so far in the US “but that could change”, said Dr Sean O’Leary, a paediatric infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital

Colorado who serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious disease.

O’Leary said efforts are getting under way to collect information on the disorder, dubbed a “paediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome potentially associated with Covid-19”.

“Every academic centre I know of is looking for these cases and trying to systematically track them,” he said.

The New York Department of Health on Wednesday reported 64 cases of the new syndrome as of Tuesday, and is calling on hospitals to immediately report any cases to the department. It did not say how many children tested positive for the coronavirus, but said it believes the syndrome is potentially associated with Covid-19.

State public health officials are asking hospitals to perform a nasal swab PCR test looking for active infections, as well as antibody tests that could detect prior exposure to the virus, known as Sars-CoV-2.

Dr Steven Kernie, a paediatric critical care expert at NewYorkPresbyterian/Columbia University’s children’s hospital, said 15 to 20 children have been treated for the condition in the intensive care unit.

“It’s still a rare condition. But it’s rising,” Kernie said.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and other groups to gather data to better understand and characterise the syndrome.

The aim is to develop a case definition that would allow the CDC to track the cases and advise doctors on how to care for these patients.

Not every child that has developed the condition has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, but enough have for doctors to believe the conditions are linked.

For most children, Covid-19 disease is mild, and children are far less likely to be hospitalised than adults, according to the CDC.

“Children seem to laugh off Covid19 most of the time,” said Dr Jane Newburger, a paediatric cardiologist at Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital.

“But rarely, a child will develop this hyper-inflammatory state.”

Newburger said there appears to be a spectrum of illnesses, with some children coming in “very sick, even in shock”. Most have a fever and impaired function in one or more organs.

Some children get sick very fast and need to be in a paediatric intensive care unit, while others can be cared for in a regular hospital ward, she said. | Reuter