Melania Rizzoli April 29, 2022
It is a new virus, still unknown to science, that causes the cases of pediatric acute hepatitis, so called because it affects the liver of children from one month to 10/15 years of age. First reported in the UK a few weeks ago, about 170 cases have been registered in Europe, including a dozen in Italy, and the etiology of this liver infection remains unknown as the infectious agent has not yet been identified. which does not correspond to any of the virus detection tests available worldwide, and it has been determined that this form of hepatitis does not fall into the group of previously known types of hepatitis, such as A, B, C, D and E, which we now know well, the markers, viruses, progression and therapeutic way. The peculiarity of this new infection is that it occurs suddenly, with an acute, rapid and at times severe onset, in some cases very serious, up to 17 young European patients, even leading to a liver transplant, one of which was performed last week about a 10-year-old Italian child.
DISEASE
The symptoms, which appear together or successively, are the classic ones, ranging from general malaise, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea, all without a fever limit, and when the sclera of the eyes and the skin become yellowish in color, and the urine becomes dark as Marsala, it means that the liver is completely damaged by the infection, as can always be seen from the specific blood tests that confirm the clinical diagnosis, which requires hospitalization. No link to the Covid-19 vaccine was found, some small patients tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection, some had had Covid virus in the previous three months while the others were absolutely clear, and any associations between the cases, with the genetic characterization of the virus did not support any suspicion of direct or indirect responsibility of the coronavirus for this pathology. It is news yesterday that the UKHSA, the Health Safety Agency, in the UK is drawing attention to an adenovirus strain called F41 as the most likely cause of this pediatric hepatitis, a virus which is not particularly troubling under normal conditions but is after the precautionary measure The measures imposed by the Covid pandemic, which have not been able to spread as usual among the pediatric population, trigger a strong immune response in these victims upon contact. Indeed, adenovirus infections are common and generally cause mild illness with influenza-like symptoms, almost never with complications and almost never with the complication of hepatitis, unless the individual is severely immunologically compromised.
LOW DEFENSE
And among the scientific hypotheses, there is precisely that of a weakening of the little ones due to the long isolation and the rigid hygiene measures imposed by the pandemic, which did not allow the adenovirus F41 to circulate freely and to develop the derived immune protection as existed over the years. The good news is that there are treatments that allow remission of the disease and that the liver is an organ capable of responding appropriately to external viral attacks, reproducing all of its diseased cells and helping the patient in the most cases to wear until complete healing.
INVESTIGATIONS
In addition, few clinical cases have been registered in Italy, which prevent alarming all parents or talking about an epidemic, and investigations are being carried out eagerly in all European scientific laboratories to find the pathogen really responsible. The fact is that we should get used to the emergence of new variants of constantly mutating viruses, always different and differently pathogenic, as the multifaceted coronavirus has taught us in the last two years, whose viral intelligence proved indomitable at the beginning. , as the ability to camouflage and seriously infect to the point of lethality by evading any proven antidote, an intelligence higher than that of man, but capable of harming him after a year, him to kill and defeat him with vaccines, which still and in the future remain the only therapeutic defense weapon against the ever-changing viral world. How does all of humanity develop in unison.
