Chicago Tribune
May 07, 2020 7:41 PM
At least half a dozen children in Illinois have been hospitalized with an illness potentially linked to COVID-19 that has also been reported in New York and Europe.
Though much is still unknown about the sickness, symptoms can include a rash, fever, red eyes, swollen hands and feet, vomiting and abdominal pain. It’s an inflammatory illness, meaning the body’s immune system “starts to rev up and attack normal tissue,” said Dr. Frank Belmonte, chief medical officer at Advocate Children’s Hospital.
Children with the illness can develop shock, which occurs when blood pressure dips and organs in the body don’t function properly. It can also cause inflammation of the heart muscle or swelling of the coronary arteries, which are the blood vessels that feed the heart.
In the U.S. and elsewhere, most of the children who have become sick with the syndrome tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, meaning they likely had COVID-19 earlier, anywhere from two to four weeks before they became ill, Belmonte said. Many of the children who developed the new illness had no previous health conditions, he said.
Advocate Children’s Hospital, which has campuses in Oak Lawn and Park Ridge, has had one case of the illness so far, plus two more children who are showing signs of it, Belmonte said. The child with the confirmed case needed a ventilator and is in intensive care, though Belmonte said the child is “doing remarkably well.”
University of Chicago Medicine’s Comer Children’s Hospital has seen at least three patients who likely had the illness potentially linked to COVID-19, according to Dr. Julia Rosebush, an assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Comer. All three children, however, are now “doing fine,” Rosebush said.(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
University of Chicago Medicine’s Comer Children’s Hospital has seen at least three patients who likely had the illness, according to Dr. Julia Rosebush, an assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Comer. At least one of those children needed intensive care, but not a ventilator. All three children, however, are now “doing fine,” Rosebush said, and one has been discharged.
Lurie Children’s Hospital said it had not seen any cases as of Thursday. The Illinois Department of Public Health was not immediately able to provide information about how many more cases there might be in Illinois.
The illness has been reported in children as young as 2 and as old as their teens. So far, one death from the illness has been reported, a 14-year-old boy in the U.K., according to an article published Thursday in the journal The Lancet.
Belmonte said the new illness is “probably still a very rare thing, but the kids can get sick enough that it’s good for us to be aware of it.”
Doctors are still learning about the illness as they see more patients, Belmonte said. He expects Chicago-area hospitals will continue to see more cases in coming weeks.
“We know so little about this now, that we’re trying to figure this out as we go along,” he said.
The New York State Department of Health reported 64 suspected cases of the illness in that state as of Tuesday, calling it a “pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome.”
Doctors have noted that the illness can have many similarities to Kawasaki disease, also an inflammatory disorder that can lead to eye redness, swollen hands and feet, and fevers. It’s unknown what causes Kawasaki.
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But the new illness seems to be different in some ways. Kawasaki mostly affects children up to age 5, and the new illness often seems to be hitting older children as well, said Dr. Anne Rowley, an attending physician in the division of infectious disease at Lurie. The illnesses also seem to differ in how they affect the heart.
And children with the new illness seem to be having a more elevated inflammatory response and getting sicker than kids with Kawasaki do, Rosebush said.
Still, doctors are treating children with the new illness in much the same way as they treat patients with Kawasaki. They are administering infusions of immunoglobulins, which are antibodies collected from donated blood, and they can also treat the children with steroids, among other things.
Belmonte advises parents whose children may be experiencing symptoms to call their pediatricians, who can decide what kind of care might be warranted.
Though fevers, rashes and stomachaches are common in children and can have many causes, Belmonte said that “if there’s concern, it’s better to err on the side of caution.” Parents may also seek emergency care if they’re very concerned with their children’s overall well-being, Rosebush said.
