UK researchers report ‘reassuring’ data on long-term MIS-C outcomes
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Researchers in the United Kingdom reported “reassuring” data on the 1-year outcomes of dozens of children who had a serious inflammatory syndrome triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection.
The illness now known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) was first characterized by physicians in London in April 2020. According to the CDC, 4,404 children in the United States have met the case definition for MIS-C and 37 have died.
In JAMA Pediatrics, researchers from pediatric intensive care units in several U.K. cities reported the first long-term observations for their initial cohort of MIS-C patients, numbering 68 children — or 89% of their original 76.
Patrick Davies, MRCPCH, a pediatric critical care physician and researcher at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, first saw symptomatic children and adolescents coming into hospitals with their parents last year.
“The parents came to us with their children and had no idea what was happening,” Davies said in an interview with Healio.
Recently, Davies said, he has seen “fewer to no” cases of MIS-C during the predominance of the delta variant.
As for the 68 patients in the initial cohort, who ranged from 0 to 13 years of age, two were readmitted to critical care, albeit for unrelated reasons. Among 19 patients who presented with aneurysms, 14 experienced a resolution, “and of those who presented with subjectively ‘bright’ coronary arteries, 9 of 10 had resolution and 1 patient progressed to having unresolved coronary artery aneurysms (albeit the latest follow-up echocardiography was 86 days postadmission),” Davies and colleagues reported.
“All patients who presented with impaired function without aneurysm recovered by day 74,” they wrote.
The researchers noted that interpretation of the outcomes was limited by small numbers, a lack of follow-up protocol and hospital-wide readmission data, but was “strengthened by a nationwide data set.”
“Although our data identify a group of patients with a risk of significant long-term morbidity, it is reassuring that the majority of patients had good outcomes with no significant medium- or long-term sequelae,” Davies and colleagues wrote.
References:
CDC. Reported Cases of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children. Accessed Sept. 3, 2021.
Davies, P et al. Pediatric Crit Care Med. 2021;22(5):e285-e293. doi:10.1097/PCC.0000000000002728