Italian and British doctors are investigating a possible link between the coronavirus pandemic and severe inflammatory disease in children who come to hospitals with high fever and swollen arteries .
Doctors in northern Italy, one of the world’s biggest covid-19 hotspots, have reported an unusually high number of children under the age of nine with severe forms of the rare Kawasaki disease, much more common in Asia.
Doctors in Great Britain have noticed the same thing, so Health Minister Matt Hancock said at a press conference on Monday that he was “very concerned” and that experts were analyzing the issue closely.
Kawasaki disease, the cause of which is unknown, affects children under the age of five and causes high fever, rash, swollen lymph nodes and, in severe cases, inflammation of the heart arteries.
More than 20 children with severe vascular inflammations arrived at the hospital in Bergamo last month, six times more than in a year, said children’s cardiologist Matteo Ciuffreda.
He added that only a few of them tested positive for coronavirus and that colleagues from Madrid and Lisbon had contacted him with similar cases.
He called on doctors to document every such case to determine whether there is a connection between Kawasaki disease and covid-19 and announced that he would publish his findings in a scientific journal.
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