US: Children may be at increased risk of stroke after COVID-19 infection, according to a small study conducted in the United States.
The research, published this week in the journal Pediatric Neurology, reviewed medical charts and diagnosis codes to identify 16 hospital patients who had an ischemic stroke between March 2020 and June 2021.
Most of those took place between February and May 2021, shortly after the surge of COVID pediatric cases. Of those tested for COVID antibodies, nearly half tested positive.
None of the 16 had been severely sick with the virus and some had been asymptomatic, the researchers said. Five patients were not tested for past COVID infection, a limitation of the study, they said.
“It may be that hyper-immune response that comes later that’s causing kids to clot,” said Mary Glen J. Vielleux, a pediatric neurology resident at University of Utah Health and lead author of the study. Over the past five years, the number of children with strokes of uncertain origins had averaged around 4 per year.
In the first six months of 2021, the hospital cared for 13 children with a stroke of unknown origins.
The study’s results are in contrast to the findings of a 2021 international study of children early in the pandemic that suggested COVID-19 did not cause an increased risk of stroke in children.
The data shows that even children who were asymptomatic from COVID-19 could go on to experience a serious complication like stroke, Vielleux added.
– NDTV
by Daily News Sri Lanka
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