United States warns of childhood diseases linked to COVID-19

WASHINGTON: The US health authorities. USA They issued an alert Thursday (May 14) about a rare but sometimes fatal autoimmune condition among children believed to be related to COVID-19.

The disease, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called multisystemic inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), was first reported in Britain in late April.

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“Health care providers who have cared for or are treating patients under the age of 21 who meet the MIS-C criteria should report the suspected cases to their local, state or territorial health department,” the CDC said.

Criteria include fever, multiple swollen organs causing serious illness requiring hospitalization, a confirmed or recent active coronavirus infection, and no other plausible cause.

New York State has previously named Pediatric Multisystemic Inflammatory Syndrome (PMIS), where more than 100 cases have been reported, including at least three deaths.

Doctors who have treated the disease say that patients sometimes have symptoms similar to a rare condition called Kawasaki disease, which causes blood vessels throughout the body to swell and cause extreme pain.

The CDC said doctors should “consider MIS-C in any pediatric death with evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection,” referring to the virus that causes COVID-19.

But it is not yet known if the condition is limited to children, the CDC added.

Sunil Sood, a pediatrician at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New York, told AFP that some children had very mild forms of the disease, but that about half of the patients he and his colleagues had seen had to receive intensive treatment for inflammation. cardiac.

Treatment consists of injecting antibodies, as well as administering steroids and aspirin in the event that patients experience a sudden loss of blood pressure, called “shock.”

He added that the cases appeared to arise mainly four to six weeks after a child had been infected and had already developed antibodies.

“They had the virus, the body fought it before. But now there is a delayed exaggerated immune response,” he said.

In addition to the mystery, the cases were reported first in Europe and then in North America, but not in Asian countries like China, Taiwan, and South Korea, where the virus first emerged.

It was speculated that certain populations could be more genetically susceptible and others less, Sood said, although that theory is not confirmed.

Six of eight patients in a recent Lancet study from Britain were of Afro-Caribbean descent.

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