Children developing severe inflammation, linked to COVID-19

A condition called multisystem inflammation syndrome, or MIS-C, has been found in dozens of children by two different U.S. research groups, according to STAT News.

Researchers say it is a side effect of COVID-19 and reports have described children who develop severe inflammation affecting multiple organ systems after having had Covid-19, sometimes between two and four weeks after the infection, according to a two studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The majority of the children were previously healthy, the studies report.

One of the studies comes from Boston Children’s Hospital, who reports that 80% of the children who developed the condition required intensive care, 20% required mechanical ventilation and 2%, died.

The second study, from researchers from New York state, presented a similar percentage of 99 children who developed the syndrome required ICU care and two children died.

In both studies, many of the children developed cardiovascular and clotting problems and many had gastrointestinal symptoms. A high proportion also had skin rashes, according to STAT News.

“Ours were really sick kids,” Adrienne Randolph, an ICU physician at Boston Children’s Hospital and senior author on one of the papers said to STAT News.

Manish Patel, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 response team, said the message to parents is they should be on the lookout for fever and rash in children who have recently had COVID-19, reports STAT News.

The reports showed that very few of the children who reported symptoms were under the age of five. The average age of those included in the study was eight-years-old.