Pediatric Archives - Dr Amin Azhari - دکتر امین اظهری

Babies Born During Pandemic’s First Year Score Slightly Lower on a Developmental Screening Test

Babies Born During Pandemic First Year Score Slightly Lower on a Developmental Screening Test - کاهش رشد شیرخواران در زمان پاندمی

Columbia researchers found that babies born during the pandemic’s first year scored slightly lower on a developmental screening test of social and motor skills at 6 months—regardless of whether their mothers had COVID during pregnancy—compared to babies born just before the pandemic.

The study, which included 255 babies born at NewYork-Presbyterian’s Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Allen Hospital between March and December 2020, was published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Release date: 04 January 2022
Source: Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Covid-19, Public Health, Public Health

Elevated Biomarker Related to Blood Vessel Damage in All Children with SARS-CoV-2

Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have found elevated levels of a biomarker related to blood vessel damage in children with SARS-CoV-2 infection, even if the children had minimal or no symptoms of COVID-19. They also found that a high proportion of children with SARS-CoV-2 infection met clinical and diagnostic criteria for thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA). TMA is a syndrome that involves clotting in the small blood vessels and has been identified as a potential cause for severe manifestations of COVID-19 in adults.

To assess the role of complement activation in children with SARS-CoV-2, the Immune Dysregulation Frontier Program, including co-senior authors Edward Behrens, MD and Hamid Bassiri, MD, PhD and co-first authors Caroline Diorio, MD and Kevin McNerney, MD, analyzed 50 pediatric patients hospitalized at CHOP with acute SARS-CoV-2 infection between April and July 2020. Of those 50 patients, 21 had minimal COVID-19, 11 had severe COVID-19, and 18 were diagnosed with MIS-C. The researchers used soluble C5b9 (sC5b9) as a biomarker for complement activation and TMA. sC5b9 has been implicated as an indicator of severity in TMA after hematopoietic stem cell transplant; transplant patients with markedly elevated sC5b9 have increased mortality.

The findings were published in Blood Advances.

Release date: 08 December 2020
Source: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Public Health

Midwest Pediatric Surgery Consortium finds antibiotics alone successfully treat uncomplicated appendicitis in children

New research expands on a 2015 pilot study to demonstrate that nonoperative management of uncomplicated appendicitis is a safe and effective option in a variety of healthcare systems.

Appendicitis is the most common cause for emergency abdominal surgery in childhood, affecting 80,000 children in the United States each year, but nonoperative treatment options are viable. A study performed by the Midwest Pediatric Surgery Consortium, led by Peter Minneci, MD, and Katherine Deans, MD, co-founders and directors of the Center for Surgical Outcomes Research at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and published online today in JAMA, found that antibiotics alone successfully treated children with uncomplicated appendicitis and was associated with fewer disability days at one year.

Of 1,068 patients from 10 health centers enrolled in the study, 67.1% of those who elected to initially manage their care through antibiotics alone experienced no harmful side effects and did not later require an appendectomy by their one-year follow-up. Patients in the non-operative group experienced an average of 6.6 disability days, compared to the 10.9 days in the surgery group. Non-operative management was also associated with fewer disability days for caregivers.

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