Doctors at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital. at Vanderbilt have found another reason to vaccinate children against COVID-19: to help reduce the likelihood of neurological complications from the virus.
“COVID-19 and Acute Neurological Complications in Children,” a study of more than 15,000 children hospitalized with COVID-19 at 52 children’s hospitals over a two-year period, was recently published in Pediatrics, a peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“We determined that neurologic complications are relatively common, occurring in approximately 8% of children hospitalized with COVID-19,” said James Antoon, MD, PhD, MPH, Monroe Carell Assistant Professor of Pediatrics. “Complications are almost uniformly associated with worse outcomes and can be life-altering conditions.
“The best way to prevent these complications is to reduce your chances of contracting COVID-19 by getting vaccinated, wearing masks in crowded indoor places, and staying home when you’re sick.”
Antoon, the paper’s first author, and his colleagues noted that when the Omicron variant first emerged, cases of neurological complications were reported in children, but most of the understanding of the complications was derived from studies of adults.
This recent analysis of children aged 2 months to 18 years showed that neurologic complications, defined as encephalopathy, encephalitis, aseptic meningitis, febrile seizures, nonfebrile seizures, brain abscess and bacterial meningitis, Reye’s syndrome, and cerebral infarction, were associated with increased risk of ICU admission, readmission, hospital mortality, and increased hospital costs compared to hospitalizations without neurological complications.
As of April 2022, more than 13 million cases of COVID-19 were reported in children and adolescents in the United States, according to the study.
As we found in our study, complications related to COVID-19 can have a significant impact on children’s lives. With the emergence of new highly contagious variants, the potential patients at risk are growing.
Our results emphasize the importance of vaccination and prevention of COVID-19 in children in order to prevent these potentially life-threatening complications.”
James Antoon, MD, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatrics at Monroe Carell
The work was supported by the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.
Antoon’s co-authors included Monroe Carell and Vanderbilt University Medical Center colleagues Leigh Howard, MD, MPH, Alison Herndon, MD, MPH, Katherine L. Freundlich, MD, Carlos G. Grijalva, MD , MPH, Derek J. Williams, MD , MPH and the Children’s Hospital Association Biostatistician Principal Matt Hall, PhD.
Source:
Vanderbilt University Medical Center