The World Health Organization (WHO) is studying a possible link between covid-19 and Kawasaki disease.
It is a very rare inflammatory syndrome that affects children. There are about thirty cases in our country. In France, a 9-year-old child with a form close to this syndrome died.
An inflammatory disease probably linked to Covid-19 and affecting some children has caused the first death in France, a nine-year-old boy, but this syndrome close to Kawasaki’s disease remains rare, with 144 cases reported so far. The child died in Marseille on May 8 of brain damage, following a heart attack, told AFP professor Fabrice Michel, head of the pediatric resuscitation service at La Timone. Serology tests have shown that this child “had been in contact” with the coronavirus, but he had not developed the symptoms of Covid-19, the doctor continued.
In Belgium, a register has been created to identify and analyze the cases of children affected. There are about thirty cases in our country. This disease that affects children is characterized by high fevers, rashes or conjunctivitis.
What do we know about the potential link with the coronavirus?
“Whether he had it or not, it doesn’t change anything”
During a visit to the pediatric emergency department of another Marseille hospital on May 2, the boy had been examined, presenting “a clinical picture comparable to that of scarlet fever”, without “signs of severity”. He had been sent home with treatment. But the same evening, he became very ill at home, with a cardiac arrest, and was taken to pediatric intensive care. He died there after receiving care for a week. In its weekly point Thursday evening, the public health agency France made mention of the death of this boy, suffering from another disease, “neuro-developmental comorbidity”, without specifying which.
But according to Pr Michel, this other disease played no role in his death: “Whether he got it or not, it doesn’t matter“. This child is the first to die in France of an inflammatory disease probably linked to Covid-19. “is serious but very rare, and we are convinced that children must continue to return to school”, insisted Professor Caroline Ovaert, head of the pediatric cardiology service at Marseille hospitals.
The disease has intrigued health authorities in several countries for two weeks, even though children are very little affected by the severe forms of Covid-19.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that it is studying a possible link between the two diseases. “We call on all clinicians around the world to work with their national authorities and the WHO to be alert and better understand this syndrome (Kawasaki) in children”, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Regression
After an initial alert in the United Kingdom in late April, similar cases have been reported in New York, Italy or Spain. Deaths are extremely rare, with a five-year-old child in New York and a 14-year-old adolescent in London.
In France, 144 cases of syndrome “rare and (which) currently appears to be in decline” were identified between March 1 and May 14, including more than half in the Paris region, according to Public Health France Friday evening. Sixty-five children had to be treated in intensive care and 25 in critical care. The rest were hospitalized in pediatrics. Symptoms are high fever, abdominal pain and digestive upset, rash, conjunctivitis, and the tongue that reddens, swells and looks raspberry. They are close to Kawasaki disease, which affects children and causes inflammation of the blood vessels.
However, there are differences: the inflammatory nature and the cardiac damage are “much more marked” in the cases suspected of being linked to Covid-19 than in classic Kawasaki disease, according to Public Health France. In addition, the new disease can affect older children – 5 to 20 years old – than Kawasaki disease, which mainly affects the youngest. Among the cases recorded in France, a third was between five and nine years old, a little more than a quarter between 10 and 14 years old and about as much between one and four years old, according to Public Health France.
Ethnicity?
More than half of the cases tested positive for Covid-19, and “link to virus was likely” in 12% of small patients, because they had been in contact with a positive subject or had had a CT scan that evoked Covid-19. “These results are very much in favor of a link between SARS-CoV-2 infection and this pathology”, judge Public Health France, who considers that in these children, it occurs “within an average of (…) four weeks after infection“by the coronavirus. Scientists who have worked on these cases in the countries concerned have hypothesized that the immune system of some children has run wild, a few weeks after infection with the virus.
Two studies published in recent days in the medical journal The Lancet have described the first cases to have occurred in England and Italy. In England, six of the first eight cases observed were black children, “of Afro-Caribbean origin”, according to one of these studies, which could suggest a genetic track.
The boy dead in Marseille was also “of African origin”, according to Pr Michel, who did not draw any conclusion from this, however: “It may also be populations where the virus circulates more. “
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