Doctors in Britain, Italy and Spain have been warned to look out for a rare inflammatory condition in children that is possibly linked to the new coronavirus.
Earlier this week, Britain’s Paediatric Intensive Care Society issued an alert to doctors that in the past three weeks, there has been an increase in the number of children with “a multisystem inflammatory state requiring intensive care” across the country.
The group said there was “growing concern” that either a COVID-19 related syndrome was emerging in children or that a different, unidentified disease might be responsible.
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“We already know that a very small number of children can become severely ill with COVID-19, but this is very rare,” Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health president Russell Viner said.
“New diseases may present in ways that surprise us and clinicians need to be made aware of any emerging evidence of particular symptoms,” he said.
The cases were also reported to have features of toxic shock syndrome or Kawasaki disease, a rare blood vessel disorder.
Only some of the children tested positive for COVID-19, so scientists are unsure if these rare symptoms are caused by the novel coronavirus or by something else.
Health officials estimate there have been about 10 to 20 such cases in Britain and the National Health Service (NHS) England said that it is urgently investigating the reports.
Spain’s Association of Pediatrics has made a similar warning, telling doctors that in recent weeks, there had been a number of school-age children suffering from “an unusual picture of abdominal pain, accompanied by gastrointestinal symptoms” that could lead within hours to shock, low blood pressure and heart problems.
“It is a priority to recognize these [symptoms] to urgently refer these patients to a hospital,” the association said.
In Italy, Angelo Ravelli of Gaslini Hospital and a member of the Italian Pediatricians Society, sent a note to 10,000 colleagues with related concerns.
He and his team reported an unusual increase in the number of patients with Kawasaki disease, adding that some children had COVID-19 or had contacts with confirmed virus cases.
Kawasaki symptoms include a high temperature that lasts for five days or more, a rash and swollen glands in the neck, the NHS said.
While the reports were concerning, there was still no solid evidence that the rare syndrome was caused by COVID-19, said James Gill, an honorary clinical lecturer at Warwick Medical School.
“Regardless of source, multisystem inflammatory diseases are exceptionally serious for children and already stretched intensive care teams, so keeping an extra eye out for new symptoms arising in the patients we see is always a good thing,” he said.
Some possible cases have also been reported in France and Belgium.
The WHO said it was attempting to gather more information on any new, coronavirus-related syndrome in children from its global network of doctors, but had not received any official reports about it.
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