Neuroimaging patterns should prompt investigation of possible COVID-19 as the etiologic factor
While neurological complications of COVID-19 in children are rare, unlike in adults, an international expert review of positive neuroimaging findings in children with acute and postinfectious COVID-19 found that the most common abnormalities resembled patterns of immune-mediated disease in the brain, spine and nerves.
The strokes, which are most frequently reported in adults with COVID-19, were found much less frequently in children. The study of 38 children, published in the magazine The Lancet, was the largest to date of central nervous system imaging manifestations of COVID-19 in children.
“Thanks to a major international collaboration, we discovered that neuroimaging manifestations of COVID-19 infection in children could range from mild to severe and that pre-existing conditions were generally absent,” says co-lead author Susan Palasis, MD, chief of Division of Neuroradiology at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago and Associate Professor of Radiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
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