Abstract
The COVID-19 disease usually leads to mild infectious disease in children, but some develop serious complications. Here, we describe the characteristics of children with COVID-19 in northern Iran, the Golestan province. Ninety-one confirmed cases were enrolled in the study, aged 0–18 years. Demographic, clinical, comorbidity, laboratory, and radiological data were compared based on the disease severity (admitted to intensive care unit (ICU) or not) and disease outcome (recovered or deceased). Sixteen (17.5%) cases were hospitalized in ICU, and 8/91 (8.8%) deceased. Fever and cough were the most common clinical symptoms. Among all symptoms notified there were no significant differences between severe and milder cases, or between those who deceased and recovered. Failure to thrive (FTT), malignant disease and neurological disease were significantly more prevalent in severe cases as was frequently reported comorbidities. Laterality, ground-glass opacity, and lung consolidation were the most common findings in chest computed tomography. The data confirms that the COVID-19 disease has various presentations in children, and clinical, laboratory, and radiological findings may help predict the development of severe forms of COVID-19 among children.
Highlights
Human beings are susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 infection, though the clinical course and disease outcome vary from case to case [4]
This paper reports demographic, clinical, laboratory, and radiological characteristics of pediatric COVID-19 cases admitted in Taleghani Children Hospital in Gorgan, north of Iran, and aims to define factors that may help predict the development of severe forms of COVID-19 among children, at least in northern Iran
All patients had been confirmed positive by reverse transcriptase Real-time PCR targeting the SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein (N) and ORF1ab genes according to the Iranian national COVID-19 diagnostic protocol
Summary
A sudden outbreak of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) was identified in China at the end of 2019 and spread worldwide [1]. As of November 2th 2021, more than 247 million patients with COVID-19 have been confirmed globally, and more than 5.9 million confirmed cases have been reported in Iran. Human beings are susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 infection, though the clinical course and disease outcome vary from case to case [4]. Patients with underlying diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and chronic bronchitis are the most affected and associated with much higher case-fatality rates [5]. The severity of COVID-19 depends on a complicated interaction between the host, virus, and environment, leading to different clinical courses and disease outcomes [6, 7]. COVID-19 usually leads to a mild infectious disease, some develop serious complications like the multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) [10, 11]
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