• Spain The strange cases of childhood hepatitis that have been detected: symptoms and possible causes

  • Infectious Adenovirus F41, the main 'suspect' of cases of childhood hepatitis

  • Rare childhood infectious hepatitis, symptoms, theories about its origin and cases in the world

The World Health Organization (WHO) has assured that the increase in cases of acute childhood hepatitis of unknown origin is a "very urgent" issue to which they are giving "absolute priority".

"It is very urgent and we are giving absolute priority to this and to working very closely with the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control in management and coordination," the WHO Regional Director of Emergencies, Gerald Rockenschaub, assured on Monday in Lisbon. .

The specialist, who is in Portugal for the Universal Health and Preparedness Review (UHPR, in English) -a program to share resources between countries to prepare responses to public health emergencies-, explained that several countries have been put on notice to "keep an eye on this more specifically," after the increase in reported cases.

"We are doing everything possible to

quickly identify what is causing this

and then take the appropriate measures, both nationally and internationally," he stressed.

The WHO has pointed out that there are about 190 children with the infection worldwide.

Spain already has 22 minors under investigation, only eight confirmed

The

first ten cases of this acute hepatitis were reported by the United Kingdom

to the World Health Organization (WHO) on April 5, in children under ten years of age without previous ailments, and since then infections have also been detected in Spain, Israel, Denmark, Italy, the United States and Belgium, among others.

The age of those affected ranges

between one month and 16 years

, in most cases they do not have fever, and in none of them have the viruses associated with these ailments been detected (hepatitis A, B, C, D and E) , according to the health organization.

In Portugal, a country that has not yet detected cases, the General Directorate of Health announced the creation of a body of work to monitor the situation.

Possible perverse effect of Covid

The main theory that specialists have to explain acute childhood hepatitis, of which some 200 cases have been detected in the world, is that an "adenovirus" linked to "a perverse effect of covid", which has caused that there are

immunosuppressed children due to the isolation

they have maintained for almost two years that

has limited their defenses

, making them more exposed to this pathogen.

This has been detailed to Efe by the specialist in Microbiology at the Zendal Hospital in Madrid,

Pablo Barreiro

, who is a professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR), who has stressed that the two hundred Known cases of this hepatitis

"may just be the tip of the iceberg."

Most of these two hundred cases, he says,

have been diagnosed in children between 2 and 7 years old and about 10% have required a liver transplant

;

In Spain, the latest data is that there are 8 confirmed cases of this serious hepatitis with no epidemiological link, although 22 cases have been investigated since January, which supports the idea that "there are more, but without symptoms that are not so serious and that is why they have been more difficult to detect," he details.

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  • Hepatitis

  • Infectious diseases

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