Syndrome multisystem inflammatory of the child and COVID: the mystery persists

The CHU Sainte-Justine in Montreal

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June 26, 2020 11h17

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Syndrome multisystem inflammatory of the child and COVID: the mystery persists

Jean-Benoit Legault

The canadian Press

MONTREAL – The review of 21 small patients with the syndrome multisystem inflammatory of the child (SIME) has not led researchers at the CHU Sainte-Justine in the expected direction.

“It’s really something disturbing because one has the feeling that it is related to the COVID, the increase occurs in the context of the pandemic, has given primacy to The canadian Press dr. Elias Haddad. But for the moment we have not found, in 16 of 21 children, no formal proof of the infection.”

Dr. Haddad and his colleagues had in fact detected the presence of the coronavirus that in five patients. The virus has been found in the nasopharynx of one of them, and antibodies in the blood of four others.

Dr. Haddad does not hide have been taken aback by these results. He and his colleagues have therefore contrevérifiés of four different ways, without that there is nothing to change there – the negative results remained negative and the positive results are still positive.

“It questions us because we really feel that we see about three times more of this type of inflammatory syndrome, which resembles Kawasaki disease, (…) as usual, while the children were locked in their houses, he said.

“After what had been published by our colleagues in Italian and English, we expected to find in the majority of patients antibodies anti-SARS-CoV-2.”

French researchers have shown a positive serology in up to 50% of the cases, the study of 172 patients.

These results, surprising as they may be, do not return the researchers to the starting point, assures the doctor Haddad, since any outcome contributes in its own way to the advancement of science and knowledge.

He reminds us that there are still five patients in whom the virus has been detected. He and his colleagues will be busy now to study what differentiates potentially these patients from the others.

“It has been argued, it has ticked a box, and now it is in front of a scientific enquiry, he said in conclusion. That is what that wants to say all this? How is it that we see so many cases in times of a pandemic? And that among all these cases, there was finally light in which we can see antibodies present? We look for other explanations. This is what makes our job exciting.”

Le Soleil