Doctors from Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park have published a study concerning a pediatric inflammatory syndrome related to COVID-19.
After studying the cases of 33 pediatric patients admitted to the children’s hospital, the researchers published the retrospective study of multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children, abbreviated as MIS-C, cases in the Journal of Pediatrics on June 13.
Symptoms of child patients with MIS-C include a fever, laboratory evidence of inflammation, evidence of clinically severe illness requiring hospitalization, multi-system organ involvement (cardiac, renal, respiratory, hematologic, gastrointestinal, dermatologic or neurological), and test positive for current or recent COVID-19 infection.
All of the patients in the study were admitted to the hospital between April 17 and May 13 and tested positive for COVID-19 – they were predominantly male, and had a median age of 8.6 years.
Additionally, nearly a third of the patients had gastrointestinal symptoms as well as involvement of other organ systems. Hemodynamic instability, cardiac dysfunction, and coronary abnormalities were other prominent findings in the children’s symptoms.
Dr. Christine A. Capone, the paper’s first author, said that being on in an area with a high number of COVID-19 cases proved imperative for the research.
“Being in the epicenter of COVID-19, it was essential for us to look at our patient’s cases and determine what was helping children recover from this serious, COVID-related disease,” Capone said. “We found intravenous antibody/immunoglobin treatment used in conjunction with methylprednisolone and aspirin to be effective treatments that allowed all of the patients’ conditions to rapidly improve with a median discharge time from the hospital of four days.”
Findings suggest that MIS-C shares some similarities with Kawasaki disease, an acute febrile illness where children present with a rash, swelling of the hands and feet as well as irritation and inflammation of the mouth, lips and throat.
The researchers did, however, find notable differences between the two diseases, including the predominance of gastrointestinal symptoms in MIS-C, an older age range in the MIS-C patients (compared with a median age of 2.5 years for patients with Kawasaki disease), and elevated measurements of inflammation and a higher proportion of patients with shock and/or impaired cardiac function (76 percent) in patients with MIS-C, as compared with the less than 3 percent of reported complication rate of shock in KD. These findings indicate that MIS-C may be a syndrome distinct from Kawasaki disease.
Dr. Charles Schleien, Northwell Health’s senior vice president and chair of pediatric services, and the Philip Lanzkowsky Chair and Professor of Pediatrics at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, says the findings will be crucial in treating COVID-19 as a whole.
“Dr. Capone and her team are leading the way in the care of children with COVID-19-related viruses,” Schleien said. “These findings are an important step in better understanding COVID-19.”
