Acute hepatitis in children, no link to Covid vaccine. This was confirmed by virologist Giorgio Palù, president of Aifa, the Italian drug agency, in an interview granted to “Corriere della Sera”. “Yes, it is a hypothesis definitively abandoned after the careful investigation conducted by the British health safety agency”, said the expert, just under a month since, on April 5, the United Kingdom reported to the ‘World Health Organization (WHO) the increase in acute hepatitis in healthy children, under 10 years, without being able to identify the causes well. And explaining how, among these, there may also be that of “a new virus”.
The reconstruction of events
deepening
Acute Hepatitis in Children, Kyriakides: “Worrying Situation”
“As of April 20, 166 cases of acute hepatitis have been reported, 111 in the UK, the first described internationally. For the most part they are children under the age of 5, therefore not vaccinated ”, Palù reported, retracing the steps of the story. “The same phenomenon has been reported in the United States (12 cases), Israel (12) and Japan (1). In Europe there were 55 confirmed cases. In Italy there are 17 suspected acute hepatitis episodes, none officially confirmed ”. With Covid which, among the causes, has been practically excluded. Its correlation, in fact, has been defined as “very unlikely” by the president of Aifa. “The symptoms are not directly attributable to Covid even if 16% of cases were positive for Sars-CoV-2, a percentage very close to that found in the pediatric population considering that many children have had the infection in the absolute absence of symptoms ”, underlined the expert. Adenovirus, the most common pathogen detected in 75% of confirmed cases of acute hepatitis in children in Great Britain and, in particular, of the adenovirus strain called F41, was also mentioned among the most accredited causes. In fact, as confirmed by Palù, out of “53 episodes examined by the British agency, 40 were positive for adenovirus and this now appears to be the main accused, given that it is a microorganism known to cause respiratory and gastrointestinal infections in children and adolescents” . Currently, he continued, “investigations are underway on genetics and on liver samples to understand if it is a different strain from those known”, explained the virologist again, after a dozen cases were related to the specific type. of adenovirus, F41.
The possibility linked to a new virus
In conclusion, is there the possibility that the real cause of this anomalous increase in acute hepatitis cases among young patients is a new virus? “It cannot be ruled out entirely. However, it should be demonstrated and the data are still too few and recent. I remember that in 1989 the future Nobel Prize winners for medicine, Houghton, Alter and Rice, identified the C virus as the cause of hepatitis then defined as non-A-non-B ”, Palù commented again.