Hepatitis outbreak in children

[MumbleCrumbs]

I'm currently really quite unwell with Covid and not sleeping very well so please be gentle, but is anyone else really worried about the reports of this hepatitis outbreak in children now being monitored by the WHO? It seems to have gained traction over the last few days and lots of reports coming out about it now. I know very little about hepatitis but I know its quite rare to see such severe cases in children. Could Covid be the cause? I'm just feeling really quite worried about it and so sad for these poor children and their families, how horrendous after we've all just come through a pandemic .

Some good discussion on this this week from the doctors at the Medical Faculty at Imperial college.

Dr Whittaker says
‘I would be surprised if these cases were being directly caused by SARS Cov-2 because Covid 19 has been around for 2 years and 95% of children have antibodies against it so we would have expected to see an effect of that kind sooner than this’

A good point about the timings..

Professor Wendy Barclay says:
’From an epidemiological point of view we are living in unusual times. Because of the pandemic lockdowns we have a cohort of children whose exposure to infectious diseases is very different to those children of previous years. The preliminary data shows a peak in the incidence of hepatitis in child who are around three years old.
That would support the idea that these are children who were born during the pandemic and whose first years have coincided with the reduced transmission of many different bugs, due to lockdowns and restrictions. It may be that,
a a a result these children are being exposed to this virus for the first time and their immune systems are more vulnerable’

Good point about the age - why is it affecting 3 year olds more than any age group? That doesn’t imply a link to Covid to me - more of something that happened within the environment to that specific cohort.

Professor Graham Cook says

’One possibility being explored is the easing of social restrictions has caused an increase in the circulation of adenoviruses’

Sorry HNRTT fully and I'm a little lost with the pivoting and evolving points. Is the specific thesis being alluded to by some PPs still adenovirus vaccines though presumably indirect as too many of the unfortunate children don't appear to have been vaccinated or is it now mRNA vaccines, presumably again indirect or is it all vaccines against COVID or is it all medicines or is it beyond medicines to include lockdowns against COVID?

Wowsers, talk about anti-vax bat signal.

I'm not convinced that lockdowns are the cause of this, and there isn't enough evidence yet, but at least it's a credible theory (especially if the age group most affected is really is around 3 years old ... ).

None of the children affected have had a vaccine according to that news report, any under 5 can not have been vaccinated and even those 5-11 are most likely not vaccinated (take up is low and it's only recently been available). It's obviously not the vaccines. The breastfeeding idea is a massive, massive stretch of the imagination and plausibility, especially given low bf rates in this country.

Vaccines also can't explain the similar effect seen after previous pandemics.

Good point about the age - why is it affecting 3 year olds more than any age group? That doesn’t imply a link to Covid to me - more of something that happened within the environment to that specific cohort.

Hmm, what happened within the environment in the last 2 and a half years? A pandemic. I don't think any of the scientists investigating this outbreak are suggesting it is purely Covid-19 related, but something has primed this response in children 16 and under all over the world. Worldwide, the most affected age group are the under 5s, but there are also children of other ages, and babies.

There are a lot of misconceptions about ‘building immunity’ - generally babies get immunity from their mother and breast milk, and from vaccination. They don’t need to build it up by being exposed to people, and in fact young babies are better off being kept away from many common viruses on the whole.

So the lockdown and immunity argument holds the least weight imho.

I wonder how many people don't report because they are afraid they might be called a Covid anti vaxxer by those around them.

Is there an eye roll emoji? You report confidentially. I know because I reported a reaction DD had to another vaccine. If you were worried about what people would think, you'd not tell those people. You'd still tell the medical types.

@Zilla1 @milkyaqua So you don't think the people looking into this have asked if all the 5 years plus were all vaccinated or if the mother's were all vaccinated and if all the mother's of all those children too young to be vaccinated had breastfeed. To rule out the possibility of the vaccine causing this?

Babies get initial immunity from their mothers it lasts weeks maybe a month. Yes a new born is best protected and breastfeeding definitely helps with this, but an older baby needs to build up their immune system by exposure. Vaccination only covers some of the common childhood illnesses. So a child needs to build up natural immunity to all the other viruses going around. The range between one years and two is anywhere from getting 5-20 (the average being 11) viral infections.
And since the lockdowns, social distancing and masks went on for so long new borns born a year prior and during the last two years would have missed out on building their immune systems in a natural way.

If it is Covid related it's likely because lockdown measures where put in. It looks like it's mainly affecting very young children who have been prevented from building an immune system due to lockdowns etc, as it's not yet been detected in adults who have built an immune response already. So if the lockdowns had not been put in then this strain of hepatitis would not have occurred regardless of if Covid has caused it or not.

Under 5s, I would think, would be the group least likely to have been regularly checked for asymptomatic covid - or dismissed as typical sniffles.

Perhaps allowing covid to spread within schools, with pupils taking infections home to multiply within the household is responsible.

But no, it's definitely lockdown and vaccines to blame 🙄

This is an interesting article about previous unidentified infections over the past 8 years

www.statnews.com/2022/05/16/puzzling-pediatric-hepatitis-cases-echo-acute-flaccid-myelitis/

@CherryBlossomAutumn you better tell all those medical scientists and professors I quoted about the ‘misconceptions about building immunity’ you appear to think you know more than them.

I am very pro vaccine but you don’t build immunity to colds for example through vaccinations. We don’t have vaccinations for adenoviruses..children build immunity through exposure and successfully fighting off all the viruses that are constantly circulating.

I have no doubt finding the cause to this will be very complicated and may not be one reason. But the lockdown and social distancing hypothesis makes the most sense to me (and the scientists above)

@milkyaqua yes the pandemic happened. And it happened to everyone.
That does not mean this was caused by Covid. What is specific to this younger age group that is causing this problem? If it was Covid we would have seen issues earlier and across the population.

@Zilla1 I assume this is aimed at me. Personally I am able to have more than one thought at a time so yes one thing has lead to another. Isn't that how research works?

I actually think Dr Graham Cooke has a good point.
They are exploring whether the easing in restrictions has increased circulation of adenoviruses. It seems there are many more cases than they would expect and due to under reporting in many countries we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Adenoviruses have been suppressed due to social distancing. Then after 2 years we all
mix normally. Does this cause them to mutate and become more harmful too? This would explain why younger children are worse affected. Even older children and babies. Older children may have had a bit of exposure but not enough to fight off a more virulent virus. Babies may not normally have issues with adenoviruses but this one is proving more serious.

Only older children and adults who have been exposed to adenoviruses over their lifetimes repeatedly have sufficient immunity for this not to be a problem.

I think the key to finding the cause is the age of
those affected. Why young children? Why does this peak at age 3?

Those older children affected may suffer from immune problems?

Actually @Olivestone I think I read many did. I’m going to have to have a dig about but I’m
sure I read it was affecting those with compromised immunity for whatever reason.

@Olivestone no not aimed at you as I didn't have the time to review the thread. It's slightly complicated but depending on the discipline, research generally has a thesis then runs experiments with controls or looks at the evidence to see if the thesis is justified. What it doesn't do is constantly pivot nor mine the data without a provable hypothesis to try and prove a belief before the original thesis is proved or disproved.

Although thinking about it Im sure I've read those affected were otherwise healthy so perhaps not.

There is a theory that the immune system needs to be constantly challenged for it to recognize the viruse's it's had before. Perhaps for some older children this is the problem.
Similar to adults having got really bad colds since lockdowns etc ended.

Oh okay, yes would be interested to read that too

@Zilla1 I'm not in a position to run experiments. These are my thoughts based on the research I've done reading different articles and studies etc. Hence the jumping around a bit. I imagine that's the same for most people commenting on this thread.

But you asked 'Isn't that how research works?'

So no thoughts on potential previous covid infection?

The problem is 95% of children have antibodies to Covid. So proving cause and correlation there is going to be tricky. Most children have now been exposed to Covid. It’s not a rare event.

Only 16% of the children affected (in the U.K.) had a positive test at the time of being admitted to hospital (in line with what you would expect at that stage on the pandemic).

As the scientists have said above, if Covid was the link then they would have expected to see issues earlier and it would have affected a broader age range.

"The big focus over the next week is looking at serological testing for previous exposure and infections with COVID," Philippa Easterbrook, from the WHO’s global hepatitis program, told a press conference.

"At present, the leading hypotheses remain those which involve adenovirus — with also still an important consideration about the role of COVID as well, either as a co-infection or a past infection."

www.voanews.com/a/who-studies-whether-covid-19-has-role-in-child-hepatitis-mystery-/6565999.html

Considering 95% of children have Covid antibodies I think looking at past Covid infection then linking it to this adenovirus and and then to the hepatitis link will be very difficult to prove.

Obviously it’s being looked at as a hypothesis but there’s no explanation or reasoning as to why this specific age group has been affected and why it’s only become a problem now - Covid has been around for two years.

They have to look in to everything. It’s very complicated but I find listening to the experts and scientists views on this very interesting. I haven’t heard many (if any) going down the Covid route (apart from the lady who would have us in lockdown forever). Most think it’s due to lockdowns and social distancing as I’ve quoted above.