Facebook Twitter

Some children suffer neurological symptoms after getting COVID-19-related syndrome

Some new research suggests children infected with MIS-C suffered neurological symptoms, too

SHARE Some children suffer neurological symptoms after getting COVID-19-related syndrome
Some new research suggests children infected with MIS-C suffered neurological symptoms, too.

Nurse supervisor Jennie McQueen gives children a thumbs-up after administering COVID-19 tests at a drive-thru test site in the parking lot of Rice-Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020.

Laura Seitz, Deseret News

There are new reports of children who suffered from a COVID-19-related inflammatory syndrome called MIS-C also experiencing physical and neurological symptoms, according to The New York Times.

What’s MIS-C?

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, “is a condition where different body parts like the heart, lungs, brain, skin, eyes and kidneys can become inflamed. The condition occurs in children who have been infected with COVID-19,” according to ABC News.

  • Children who were infected with the novel coronavirus experienced MIS-C, according to CNN. The syndrome appeared about three weeks after those children were diagnosed with COVID-19.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in January that it’s unsure if COVID-19 variants can cause children to experience the syndrome.

Common symptoms of MIS-C include “fevers for at least 24 hours, gastrointestinal symptoms like vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea, red eyes and fatigue,” as I wrote for the Deseret News.

Does MIS-C patients suffer neurological symptoms, too?

According to The New York Times, a new report suggests a “significant number of young people with the syndrome also develop neurological symptoms.”

Those symptoms include:

  • Hallucinations.
  • Confusion.
  • Speech impairment.
  • Balance and coordination problems.

The report looked at 46 children in a London hospital and founded 24 of them experienced those symptoms.

The children with neurological symptoms were twice as likely to require ventilators because they were “very unwell with systemic shock as part of their hyperinflammatory state,” said the study’s author, Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan, according to The New York Times.

What about symptom-free children?

Interestingly, a study from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers recently found that children without COVID-19 symptoms ended up suffering from MIS-C.