Health officials are puzzled by the mysterious cases of severe liver damage in hundreds of young children around the world.
Latest evidence points to a fairly common stomach virus that is not known to cause liver problems in healthy children.
This virus has been detected in the blood of sick children, but surprisingly has not been detected in their livers. "There are a lot of things that don't make sense," said Eric Kremer, a virus researcher at the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Montpellier, France.
As health officials in more than 12 countries examine the mystery, they are raising a number of questions:
-Are children more vulnerable because of the lockdown?
-Is there a mutated version of the adenovirus that causes it?
-Or another microbe, drug or toxin that has yet to be identified?
-Is it some kind of immune system reaction caused by a previous COVID-19 infection and a subsequent invasion by another virus?
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and researchers around the world are trying to find out what's going on. CDC officials last week said they are now looking at 180 possible cases in the U.S. Most of the children were hospitalized, at least 15 needed liver transplants and six died. More than 20 other countries have reported cases, with most in the UK and the US.
Symptoms of hepatitis include fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, dark urine, light-colored stools, joint pain and jaundice.
Conventional causes of liver inflammation in otherwise healthy children did not show up in tests. What did show up was adenovirus 41. More than half of the cases in the US have tested positive for adenovirus. In a small number of samples tested to determine what kind of adenovirus was present, adenovirus 41 showed up every time.
The fact that the adenovirus keeps showing up supports the hypothesis that it plays a role, but it's not clear how, Dr. Jay Butler, CDC deputy director for infectious diseases, told the Associated Press.
Many adenoviruses are associated with symptoms of the common cold, such as fever, sore throat and red eyes. Some cases - including adenovirus 41 - can cause other problems, including inflammation in the stomach and intestines. Adenoviruses have previously been linked to hepatitis in children, but mostly in children with weakened immune systems.
Source: in.gr
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