📰 The mystery of acute hepatitis

The enigma of these cases of acute hepatitis which have been identified – as of May 5 – in at least 230 children in 20 countries is an example of why scientists prefer to focus on facts rather than opinions: because in front of such a mystery, it is the only way by which they manage at the moment to eliminate one by one the false tracks.

As the medical magazine recalled on Wednesday STAT« the usual suspects, namely the virus (A virus is a biological entity that requires a host cell, which it uses…) of the’hepatitis (Hepatitis (from the Greek hepar: liver) means any acute inflammation or…) labeled A to E, were quickly discarded. But that leaves a lot of possibilities on the table. The good news is that there are assumptions and there are clues and there are experts in public health (Public health can be defined in many different ways. You can indeed…) and scientists from several country (Country comes from the Latin pagus which designated a territorial and tribal subdivision of extent…) who are currently working to decode these cases. But solid answers will take time. weather (Time is a concept developed by human beings to apprehend the…). »

Hepatitis is a inflammation (Inflammation is a stereotypical immune defense reaction of the…) of liver (The liver is an odd and asymmetrical abdominal organ, housed in humans in…) which can have several causes, the most frequent being that of the so-called « hepatitis » viruses. Severe cases of hepatitis in children are rare, however, and this is why the sudden onset of these cases, albeit small number (The notion of number in linguistics is treated in the article « Number…)was considered an anomaly: in Britain (Great Britain is an island off the northwest coast of…)as of April 21, there were 114 cases in a few weeks, more than in a year (A year is a unit of time expressing the duration between two occurrences of a related event…) complete, noted a report by the British Agency for health (Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and is not…). Most occurred in children under 5 years old. It was Britain that was the first country to alert theOrganization (An organization is) World Health Organization (WHO), April 8.

Most of the children recovered quickly, but 7 of them in Britain required liver transplants, which is a high proportion. According to the WHO on April 23, one in 10 cases (17 out of the 169 observed in the world (The word world can refer to:) at that time) had required a transplant. On May 3, theIndonesia (Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia (in Indonesian Republik…) announced three deaths – which occurred in April – bearing the total (Total is the quality of complete, without exception. From an accounting point of view, a…) at four.

Symptoms to watch out for: jaundice, diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

An adenovirus?

If the usual viruses are not in question, part of the research has been focused for two weeks on an adenovirus called « type 41 »: in Great Britain on April 21, it had been detected in 40 of the 53 cases then tested. In the WHO report, we are talking about 74 of the 169 cases. More intriguingly, when we only started to hear about it in April, Alabama, in the South East (Southeast is the direction halfway between the south and east cardinal points. Southeast is…) of the United States, had observed nine cases of acute hepatitis between October and February – again, more than what is observed in this State in a full year. The children were tested for a host of things, and adenovirus was one of the things that came up in all cases – although adenovirus type 41 could only be positively identified in 5 of the cases, notes the Control center (A control center, in the field of astronautics, is a room from which are…) diseases (CDC).

An adenovirus normally causes a common cold (Rhinopharyngitis or nasopharyngitis, commonly known as the common cold (pronounced ),…). Some members of this large family of viruses (88 known types) can cause gastrointestinal problems. Could it be a mutant? This is one of the avenues that is being explored, at the same time as we try to understand how a simple adenovirus could have such an impact.

But the adenovirus could also be a red herring: considering that it is a common family of viruses, it would be normal to detect it in all populations, including children.

Another avenue is of course that of COVID. Could an infection with the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, have triggered what is called a syndrome (A syndrome is a set of clinical signs and symptoms that a patient is susceptible to…) multisystem inflammatory? In Alabama, none of the nine children had symptoms consistent with this condition. And considering the enormous number of children who have been exposed to the coronavirus over the past two and a half years, if it were likely to have such an impact, one would expect these cases to be more frequent.

Vaccines were also mentioned in some circles. But very few children under 5 have been vaccinated worldwide. And the vaccine is not offered to children of this age in Britain.

In the latter country, where we are dealing with the highest number of cases, experts have looked for correlations with foreign travel, exposure to toxins or other risk factors, without finding anything, writes the British agency.

For further:
Helen Branswell, « With usual suspects ruled out, disease detectives try to crack mystery of viral hepatitis cases in kids », STATMay 4.