The cases of acute pediatric hepatitiswhich has affected several children in the United States and Europe, have alarmed the experts, now engaged in studying the possibilities causes and consequences of the disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, for example, have carried out research that has been able to provide new and interesting details on the disorders that children experience when they become ill, identifying real ones. “spy” symptoms that anticipate the most severe form of liver infection.
Hepatitis in children: the new symptom study
On Friday, April 29, the CDC released a new, more detailed study that looked at nine confirmed cases of hepatitis linked to adenovirus, registered at the Children’s of Alabama between October and February (full report here). Of these: three of the patients suffered from acute liver failure and two required liver transplants. All patients were under the age of seven and most (five of them) were children under the age of two.
After the first cases detected in America, WHO scientists have also begun to monitor the evolution of the disease, especially when a similar outbreak of hepatitis in Europe (here the situation in Italy). About 10% of these patients required liver transplants and at least one child died.
Dr Philippa Easterbrook, a senior scientist who is part of the WHO’s global hepatitis monitoring program, said on Thursday, April 28, that this type of “severe hepatitis is unusual” in the youngest, particularly because “most of these children were previously healthy”. Furthermore, there does not appear to be any kind of common environmental exposure in patients, even their lifestyles or pre-illness health conditions were different (here the study on the possible causes of acute liver infection, which the researchers are investigating ).
Acute hepatitis in children: “spy” symptoms
However, the studies carried out by WHO and CDC have shed light on symptoms which are not only more common than in many cases they even preceded the onset of the most severe form of the disease. In addition tojaundice, which is generally a telltale sign of the liver not functioning properly. Both the American Centers for Prevention and the World Health Organization have said that two of the first warning signs for young children, which may be revealed of a liver infection caused by hepatitisI am:
If the disease progresses, the following are added:
- yellowed skin;
- yellow eyes.
Experts, as already mentioned above, aren’t sure of what exactly is causing the liver inflammationbut they suspect a virus called adenovirus 41which has been discovered in many of the sick children, may have something to do with this aggressive form of pediatric hepatitis.
Scientists also claim that it is COVID-19 vaccines highly unlikely to have anything to do with this problem, as most children who have been sick are too young to be vaccinated.