Multi system inflammatory syndrome in children and adolescents temporally related to COVID-19
Suman M Pawar
Abstract
Background: The pandemic of COVID -19 since its eruption from Wuhan, till date have rapidly captured the whole world. As of May 2020, 4 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, 285 000 deaths have been reported to WHO. Children have borne a minimal medical burden to the health care system. Children and the teenagers have been spared during this global COVID pandemic. However there have been very few cases of children seriously affected by COVID -19. Epidemiological data from many countries show that children younger than 18 years have made up only 17% of national cases in the USA, 1 1% of cases in the Netherlands, 2 and 20% of a large observational cohort in the UK. These proportions are low showing susceptibility of COVID -19 among children than in adults. But children may have similar high proportion rates of asymptomatic disease which is unclear. Recently some cases have been reported from Europe and North America describing clusters of children and adolescents with a multisystem inflammatory condition like some features similar to those of Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome. All of them requiring admission to intensive care units. This is a new syndrome relating to COVID -19 positive children. Much is not know about the full spectrum of the disease. Thus it is essential to characterize this syndrome and its risk factors. We also should get to understand its causality and describe the treatment interventions. There is therefore an urgent need for collection of standardized data describing clinical presentations, severity, outcomes, and epidemiology.