In children who have undergone COVID-19, there may be hazardous pathology in the brain, including cerebrovascular, encephalitis and stroke. This conclusion has come an international group of scientists from the United States and the UK, which examined children with neurological diseases associated with coronavirus. The article of researchers was published in the LanCet magazine. According to Russian specialists, whose words lead “news”, this is due to the attack of the immune system on the cells of its own organism and other reasons.
Scientists have been searching for younger patients with impaired central nervous system (encephalopathy), which were caused by the transferred coronavirus infection. Neuroradiologists, neurologists and pediatricians analyzed data on MRI, plasma and spinal fluid, after which children were distributed to groups according to the time of the alleged infection of SARS-COV-2. Experts excluded those cases in which direct communication with coronavirus infection was impossible or an alternative diagnosis can be assumed.
Total managed to identify 38 patients with neurological diseases associated with COVID-19. Violations of the central nervous system ranged from the lungs to very heavy. The most common turned out to be disseminated encephalomy-like changes of the brain, mediated by the effect of the immune system (in 16 children) and myelitis (8 children). Although cerebrovascular complications in children were less common than in adults, and most patients had a favorable outcome, four previously healthy child died from thromboichemic disease, and one developed a stroke with multiple hemorrhages in the brain.
According to Russian specialists, increasing the risk of neurological disorders is caused by failures in the immune system due to hypoxemia (insufficient level of oxygen in the blood) and the ability of the virus to affect the nerve cells, as a result of which the blood coagulation increases and the risk of blood formation increases. The role can also play a multi-block syndrome, striking several organs in children at once. Such patients need to pass MRI of the head and spinal cord.
As Izvestia writes, about 30 cases of multi-surround post-shaped syndrome in children requiring hospitalization were revealed in Russia. At the same time, in 70-80 percent of patients, the patients were sent to the departments of intensive therapy and intensive care.