Italy, UK explore possible COVID-19 link to child inflammatory disease

'MULTI-ORGAN INFLAMMATION'

Ciuffreda said his first case of apparent Kawasaki disease was a 9-year-old boy who came to the hospital on March 21, at the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, with high fever and low blood oxygen levels. He tested negative for the coronavirus.

A scan showed the child had an enlarged coronary artery, a hallmark of severe cases of Kawasaki disease, he said.

"The little boy worried me a lot, with a violent multi-organ inflammation affecting both heart and the lungs," Ciuffreda said. "I feared he wouldn't survive, but surprisingly, in the course of a few days, he took a positive turn and he got better."

Kawasaki disease was anecdotally linked 16 years ago to another known coronavirus, though it was never proven. The research was carried out after another, related coronavirus known as NL63 was found in a baby showing symptoms of Kawasaki disease in 2004.

Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading in Britain, said the NL63 virus uses the same receptor as the new coronavirus to infect humans, but he also stressed it was too early to draw conclusions.

"We just have to wait and see if this becomes a common observation," he said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has yet to see something similar in the United States, which has the greatest number of coronavirus infections and deaths.

"We are not aware of any reports of this phenomenon in the United States," Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, who chairs the academy's committee on infectious disease, said in an email, referring to a potential link between COVID-19 and Kawasaki-type symptoms.

Dr. Sean O’Leary, a paediatric infectious diseases expert at Children's Hospital Colorado who is part of that AAP committee, said his hospital has seen several cases of Kawasaki this year, but none in the more than 30 children admitted for COVID-19.

"Even if it is related, is a very rare complication," he said. "If it were more common, we'd already have a pretty good idea about it in the United States."