COVID-19 linked to 30-fold increase in rare childhood inflammatory disease

Enlarge / Boston Medical Center Child Life Specialist Karlie Bittrich sees to a baby while in a pediatrics tent set up outside of Boston Medical Center in Boston on April 29, 2020. (credit: Getty | Boston Globe)

Evidence is stacking up to support a link between COVID-19 and a rare, mysterious inflammatory disease in children, which can be life-threatening.

Though reports of the new disease have trickled in from several countries, many of them have been anecdotal to this point. Now, doctors in an area of Italy hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic have published detailed data on a cluster of 10 children who experienced an unusual inflammatory disease amid the outbreak, lending solid support for the link. Their report appeared Wednesday in The Lancet.

The doctors describe the condition they saw as Kawasaki-like," referring to a rare disease in children that causes inflammation of blood vessels. Kawasaki disease-identified in Japan in 1967 by Tomisaku Kawasaki-is typically marked by sustained fever, rash, swelling of hands and feet, and swollen lymph nodes in the neck. In the worst cases, it can lead to heart problems and aneurysms.

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