Study has shown that Covid infection can cause a Kawasaki-like syndrome in children. This condition is usually cured within three months.
Although coronavirus is not a serious risk to children, it can cause mild or even fatal complications. However, some have reported being affected by the multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MISC).
The long-term consequences of the infection were not known by doctors. It is an uncommon condition and was only discovered in infected children within the first few weeks.
University of Pennsylvania researchers now say that children with severe brain injuries are fully recovered within three months.
Their study of 120 children — half of whom were hospitalised with MIS-C — found they all had normal heart function within the space of a week.
But they acknowledged the need for further investigations to exclude any possible complications outside of what was done in their current research.
MIS-C is also called paediatric inflammatory multiple system syndrome (PIMS) and causes swelling all over the body.
This can lead to symptoms like Kawasaki disease. Sometimes, intensive medical attention may be required in very rare cases.
This happens when the immune system overreacts to a Covid infection, and the body attacks healthy cells.
It affects approximately one out of 3,000 individuals aged 21 and younger, according to researchers.
The University of Pennsylvania graphs show different measurements of heart performance among MIS-C patients (red line) and those who did not have Covid or heart problems (blue line). This graph shows the overall heart strain which is a measure of whether the heart has deformed or not (graph A), right ventricular strain(graph B), left-atrial strain(graph C), and longitudinal early diastolic (graph D), were all worse in MISC patients within the first week after admission, but returned to normal approximately one to 12 weeks later.
Bertie Brown was admitted to Worcestershire Royal hospital in March 2020 on his second birthday after being struck down by multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), which caused a fever and rash across his body
Dr Anirban Banerjee, a paediatrician and senior author of the study, published in the the Journal of the American Heart Association, said: ‘Recovery among these children was excellent.
These results are important for health care professionals who care for children diagnosed with MIS-C.
“Our findings could also help to guide a gradual return of playing sport after cardiac clearance, which can take three to four more months.”
Researchers examined 60 patients with MISC, who were admitted at two Philadelphia hospitals from April 2020 to January 2021.
The children, who were mostly boys and aged 10 on average, were treated with intravenous immunoglobulin — an antibody treatment that helps fight off infection — or corticosteroids, which calm down the immune system.
The group reviewed the medical records of the children and conducted heart scans.
They also monitored their progress over the next three to four month.
These findings were compared with a group of 60 healthy children, who had no heart disease or Covid.
The doctors discovered that the heart function of all MIS-C patients improved rapidly within the first week after admission. This improvement continued throughout the following weeks.
Even patients who had’significant heart abnormalities’ experienced their symptoms disappear within 3 months.
Seven percent of children admitted to hospital had a heart problem when they were first admitted. However, this condition had resolved three months later.
Eight in 10 patients lost some contractile function — the ability of the heart to contract and pump blood — when they were most unwell, but three to four months later this had also returned to normal.
The condition didn’t cause long-term problems to the coronary arteries which supply blood to the heart.
After doing a strain test of the participant’s hearts three months later — which detects whether an area of the heart is deformed or functioning differently — the team concluded there was no heart dysfunction three months after they were hospitalised.
However, researchers cautioned that MIS–C and Covid remain new conditions. Therefore it remains to be established if patients’ hearts are affected beyond four months following their diagnosis.
The condition is not like myocarditis. This rare form of inflammation occurs in the heart and can be found in as many as one-in-12300 young adults who have been vaccinated.
American Heart Association member Dr Kevin Friedman said that the study provided additional evidence that myocardial involuntary may be transient. It is unlikely to cause long-term changes in left ventricular diastolic and systolic functions.
“Although acute cardiac disease is quite common, we are happy to report that most patients have regained normal cardiac function in less than a week.
“This data indicates that persistent heart injury in MIS-C is extremely rare.
“Even for patients with severe heart problems during the acute phase, these changes can be resolved within 3 to 4 months.