COVID-19 doesn't appear to spare children as doctors detect 100 cases of a rare illness linked to the virus
The coronavirus might have set off a rare and potentially fatal illness in nearly 100 children from over six countries, according to reports.
Recently, the UK's NHS alerted doctors of cases of a rare and a yet-to-be-named illness affecting children. Since then, such reports have emerged from the US, Spain, Italy, France and Switzerland.
What is worse, some UK children with the illness died despite not having any other health conditions, according to Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
But not all of the 100 children have tested positive for the new coronavirus. They do not know whether the negative results were due to errors during testing or if the children cleared the virus from the body. Experts are, however, not ruling out the role of other disease-causing pathogens.
It is a new disease that we think may be caused by the COVID-19 virus. "We’re not 100% sure because some of the people who got it hadn’t tested positive, so we’re doing a lot of research now, but it is something that we’re worried about," Hancock told LBC Radio.
These complications could be the result of an overwhelmed immune system fighting off the virus.
Reports from US and other countries
At least three US children, aged between six months and three years, appear to have developed the illness. Among them, one child is critically ill, the second is in intensive care and the third has been discharged.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the syndrome does not appear to be common in the US.
France has also seen a similar trend of illness in children, with at least more than a dozen cases. He told Franceinfo news radio about receiving an alert from Paris about the condition.
"All of the pediatricians and critical care medics are working together to see whether it's connected to COVID-19," France's health minister Olivier Veran said Wednesday.
Even Italian doctors have reported similar instances in a large number of children under the age of nine.
What are the signs of the illness?
In addition to COVID-19 symptoms, these children develop complications in the gut and heart. Some of the signs include tummy pain, rashes, vomiting, diarrhea and inflammation of the heart, according to the Paediatric Intensive Care Society.
“Right now, we are at the very beginning of trying to understand what that represents,” Mark Gorelik, a specialist treating the patients at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, told Reuters.
However, doctors say only a few children are developing the syndrome. “Whilst this is an evolving situation, it is clear that these symptoms are reported in only handfuls of cases,” Dr Nazima Pathan, a consultant in pediatric intensive care in Cambridge, told The Guardian. “The important message is that if parents are worried about their children’s health, they should seek medical advice," she added.
Most children in the UK admitted to intensive care have shown signs of two different conditions: Toxic shock and a rare blood disorder named Kawasaki disease.
Toxic shock syndrome is an illness associated with bacterial infections. Children with the condition develop a high temperature, low blood pressure, headache, a rash and difficulty in breathing.
As for Kawasaki disease, affected children have inflamed and swollen blood vessels. The condition can get dangerous if the blood vessels supplying the heart gets swollen. Around 25% of children with Kawasaki disease experience complications with their hearts, according to NHS.
Reports have linked Kawasaki disease with human coronaviruses, Dr Roshni Mathew, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, told Reuters.
But Gorelik thinks the syndrome might be due to an illness similar to Kawasaki disease. He adds: “They have very similar features.
What might be triggering the illness?
The complications could be down to the way the immune system responds to an attack, say, from the new coronavirus. Usually, it does a good job. But sometimes, it overreacts, harming the body it was meant to protect.
According to Gorelik, the overactive response immune system kicks in some weeks after the initial infection. “It seems, a week to two weeks later, you may have the immune system responding in a very disorganized way,” he told Reuters.
Gorelik and his team believe genes might be behind the harsh immune response.