Max Minute: Steroids Eyed To Save Children From COVID-19 Kawasaki Syndrome-Like Disease
By Dr. Max Gomez
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a terrifying infectious disease leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide.
For the most part, COVID-19 has been most lethal in elderly adults and those with co-morbidities such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Now there has been an outbreak in seemingly healthy children of an unusual disease associated with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It strongly resembles a rare pediatric disease called Kawasaki syndrome.
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In a report in the journal The Lancet, researchers in northeast Italy, one of the heaviest hit COVID areas, report an incidence of this Kawasaki-like disease that is 30 times greater than that seen in the previous five years.
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The children most stricken tended to be somewhat older, averaging age 7 1/2, and had more frequent signs of gastrointestinal and cardiac involvement.
Although not all of the children tested positive for the coronavirus, the theory is that this virus or a closely related coronavirus triggered a powerful over-reaction by the immune system that led to run-away inflammation. That's why the Italian doctors treated the children with steroids, mostly successfully.
The Italian doctors stressed that this Kawasaki-like syndrome is rare, affecting no more than one in a 1,000 children exposed to the coronavirus - but they did advise that doctors be alert for signs of this disease in areas where COVID-19 is present.
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