ETIDIOH - NEW

Highlights •  Acute COVID-19 usually causes mild illness even in young and immunosuppressed children •  Nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with more severe disease •  Concurrent serious bacterial infection is rare in children admitted with acute COVID-19. ABSTRACT Background Management and outcomes of children hospitalised with acute SARS-CoV-2 infection may differ throughout the pandemic or with admission type (clinical COVID-19, incidental COVID-19 or nosocomial infection). Objectives Describe the severity, management and outcomes of hospitalised children with acute SARS-CoV-2 infection in Australia across the first 4 years of the pandemic and compare between admission types, SARS-CoV-2 variants, age groups and immune status. Study design A multi-centre prospective cohort study of 6,009 children aged 0-16 years between January 2020 to June 2023. Results Most children (84.3%) did not receive respiratory support , 33.4% received antibiotics and 8% were admitted...

Highlights •  Large study on the contribution of HCoV to childhood deaths •  Supports vigilance or further investigations into HCoV pathogenesis •  Potential information for the role Covid-19 will play during severe childhood disease •  Highlights the importance of polymicrobial infection during severe disease episodes Abstract Background Endemic human coronaviruses (HCoV-229E, HKU1, NL63, and OC43) are common causes of mild or asymptomatic respiratory infections in children but are considered rare causes of death. Methods We evaluated paediatric deaths from January 2017 through December 2022 . A panel of experts determined the cause of death (CoD) by reviewing available data, including pathological and molecular findings from minimally invasive tissue sampling (lung tissues, blood, CSF, and nasopharyngeal swabs), clinical records, and verbal autopsies. Results Endemic HCoV were detected in the respiratory samples of 3% (n=86/3357) of enrolled decedents: 1% (n=12/204...

Abstract Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) caused large biennial cyclical outbreaks of respiratory disease and cases of acute flaccid myelitis from 2014 to 2018 in the USA . An anticipated outbreak did not occur in 2020, likely due to non-pharmaceutical interventions targeting the COVID-19 pandemic. A large respiratory disease outbreak occurred again in 2022 , but uncertainty remained regarding if circulation of EV-D68 would return to the pre-pandemic patterns. We conducted prospective active surveillance of clinical respiratory specimens from Colorado children for EV-D68 in 2023 and 2024. A subset of residual specimens positive for rhinovirus/enterovirus (RV/EV) were tested for EV-D68 via a validated in-house EV-D68 reverse transcription–PCR assay. During epi weeks 18–44 in 2023, 525 residual specimens positive for RV/EV all tested negative for EV-D68. In 2024, during epi weeks 18–44 , 10 ( 1.8% ) of the 546 RV/EV-positive specimens were EV-D68-positive . The EV-D68-positive cases were predomi...

Abstract Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A/H5N1 Virus has been found in multiple US states since 2024. While human infection risk is currently low, children are a high-risk group for severe infection as the virus evolves. Preventive efforts should prioritize children in vaccine and therapeutic clinical trials and vaccine implementation strategies. Source: Journal of Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society,  https://academic.oup.com/jpids/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jpids/piaf035/8120791?redirectedFrom=fulltext ____

Abstract The risk of cardiovascular outcomes following SARS-CoV-2 infection has been reported in adults , but evidence in children and adolescents is limited . This paper assessed the risk of a multitude of cardiac signs, symptoms, and conditions 28-179 days after infection , with outcomes stratified by the presence of congenital heart defects (CHDs), using electronic health records (EHR) data from 19 children’s hospitals and health institutions from the United States within the RECOVER consortium between March 2020 and September 2023. The cohort included 297,920 SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals and 915,402 SARS-CoV-2-negative controls. Every individual had at least a six-month follow-up after cohort entry. Here we show that children and adolescents with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection are at a statistically significant increased risk of various cardiovascular outcomes, including hypertension, ventricular arrhythmias , myocarditis, heart failure, cardiomyopathy, cardiac arrest, thromboemboli...

Abstract In an epidemiologic investigation of Enterovirus (EV) infections in a Verona hospital , September 2022–September 2024, we detected EV-C105 in six pediatric patients with upper respiratory symptoms between March and May 2023. The primary objective was to describe the local incidence of EV cases. The secondary objective was to perform Sanger’s genomic characterization and the whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of EV-C105. The proportion of positive EV results was calculated based on routine molecular method testing. An available cohort of 114 underwent Sanger sequencing, and the six EV-C105 were characterized with WGS. Overall, 96% EV results were from the upper respiratory tract . The total proportion of positives in children was 83%. Out of the typed 114, 90% were Rhinoviruses and 9%, EVs . Notably, six pediatric cases were EV-C105 , placing together in a unique cluster with 99% of nucleotides belonging to the European lineage with the highest Average Nucleotide Identity, including...