Children with COVID-19 have a slightly higher risk of liver dysfunction and hepatitis afterward, according to a report posted on May 14th on medRxiv.
“We performed a retrospective cohort study on a nation-wide database of patient electronic health records (EHRs) in the US. The study population comprise 796,369 children between the ages of 1-10 years including 245,675 who had contracted COVID-19 during March 11, 2020 – March 11, 2022 and 550,694 who contracted non-COVID other respiratory infection (ORI) during the same timeframe,” according to a report posted on medRxiv.
Links Between COVID-19 Infection and Liver Injury
Compared with children infected with other respiratory infections, children infected with COVID-19 infection had a significantly increased risk of elevated aspartate transaminase, alanine transaminase and total bilirubin.
These results suggest acute and long-term hepatic sequelae of COVID-19 infection in pediatric patients. The report said that further research is needed to clarify whether the COVID-19-related liver injury described in this study is related to the current increase in cases of pediatric hepatitis of unknown origin.
‘Most of the children with acute hepatitis were generally rare in that age group and they did not report a previous COVID-19 infection.’
Children with COVID-19 infection are at significantly increased risk of subsequent liver dysfunction
and a chain of events possibly triggered by an unrecognized COVID-19 infection could be causing the mysterious cases of severe hepatitis reported in children around the world, the researchers suggest.
However, most children with acute hepatitis were generally rare in that age group and they did not report a previous COVID-19 infection. Instead, the majority have been found to be infected with an adenovirus called 41F, which is not known to attack the liver.
Researchers’ team suggests that
it is possible that the affected children, many of whom are too young to be vaccinated, may have had mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 infections that went unnoticed.
This research has been explained further in the journal The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology.
If the above statement was true then lingering particles of COVID-19 in the gastrointestinal tract in these children could be priming the immune system to over-react to adenovirus-41F with high amounts of inflammatory proteins that ultimately damage the liver.
Researchers had said, “We suggest that children with acute hepatitis be investigated for SARS-CoV-2 persistence in stool” and for other signals that the liver damage is happening because the spike protein of the coronavirus is a “superantigen” that over-sensitizes the immune system.
Source: Medindia
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