Childhood Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome: May 20 Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s Podcast

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Over the past few months, health authorities in Europe and the United States have begun to investigate new conditions affecting children.

Children appear in hospitals and have severe inflammation and loss of function in some organs such as the kidneys and heart.

It’s especially surprising because most of the time these children seemed to be healthy without the underlying illness before they developed this syndrome.

So in this episode we explore what we currently know about the new syndrome, how doctors treat it, and what it really was for a girl and her family. I will.

Now, as my own father, I want to start by reassuring my parents that this condition I’m talking about today is unusual for the time being. To date, less than 200 patients are still being investigated by physicians in the United States.

There are many things we are still thinking about. Why do only some children get sick? Why has this pandemic been started for a few months now? And what exactly is causing it?

One of the things many of them have in common is that they have tested positive for Covid-19. Experts say it can be post-viral syndrome. That is, it may not be directly triggered by Covid-19, but it could be a reaction of the patient’s immune system.

To find out more about the symptoms and how to treat the syndrome, I contacted 12-year-old Juliet Daly, one of the first patients treated for the syndrome in the United States.

I spoke to her and her father, Shawn, from the Louisiana home.

Sean Daily: Hello!

Juliet Daly: Hello!

Gupta: Juliet, let’s get started. When did you first feel sick?

Juliet: Well, it was … Friday. I woke up in the morning. My stomach started to hurt a lot. And my legs were weak and I was quite tired.

Sean: So I didn’t feel good on Friday, but she did well throughout the day. On Sunday she was nauseous. She was throwing all the water away. I was a bit worried that day and thought that if this lasted until Monday I would take her to a pediatrician.

Monday has arrived. She began to have blue lips and her limbs were cold. So when it was, this isn’t normal flu.

Gupta: So What would you do next?

Sean: So we called her pediatrician, and they talked to us on the phone. But then it sounded serious enough to bring her. So we got in. She is more ill than usual.

So if you go across the street to the ER, you can basically run some tests. And it all started to cascade when we sort.

Gupta: We found that Juliet’s oxygen level was low. Her heart is not pumping blood well to other parts of her body. The doctor decided to infuse her and then airlift it to another hospital — there were excellent staff staffed to treat her in the nearby ICU. On that journey she entered cardiac arrest and was resuscitated twice.

Dr. Jake Klein Mahone Ochsner Hospital for Children Dean of Heart Transplantation and Heart Failure Medicine: She was as close to death as you could get.

Gupta: I am Dr. Jake Kleinmahon, a pediatric cardiologist at Oxner Children’s Hospital. He handled Juliet when she arrived at ICU. Juliet tested positive for Covid-19.

Klein Mahone: Her heart was barely pressed. She had renal failure and liver failure.

Gupta: MIS-C is believed to be caused by the immune system acting in overdrive-the body’s own defenses are overreacting. And it can cause inflammation in some organs in the body. So, in order to treat Juliet, Dr. Klein Mahon gave her medicines to reduce inflammation in her heart, her lungs and her kidneys.

Klein Mahone: Therefore, these drugs stop cell signaling for inflammation and inflammatory processes. And we hope that if we can calm all of our bodies, we can give them an opportunity to recover naturally.

Gupta: Thankfully, the treatment was effective. Four days later, Juliet’s lungs began to function normally again. She was removed from the ventilator. And for the first time since her air transportation, I was able to talk to her parents.

Sean: She wanted water when she first woke up, then she wanted my wife to tell her teacher that she was hospitalized. She was like “they know”.

Gupta: Juliet seems to have fully recovered. Ten days after being hospitalized, she was able to go home and return to an online school.

Juliet: Well, I feel good.

Gupta: Are you 100% back? Do you want to return to normal?

Juliet: Well, I still feel a bit out of place. Feeling like 99%.

Sean: Yeah, we take 99%.

Gupta: Well, I’m glad you are 99%, and I send you good energy to make you 100% OK?

Sean: Yup. That is, she said 98% two days ago. So we are on the right track.

Dr. Jane Barnes, Director, Kawasaki Disease Research Center, University of California, San Diego: Kawasaki disease is a very visual disease.

Gupta: Dr. Jane Barnes is the Director of the Kawasaki Disease Research Center at the University of California, San Diego.

Burns: Children develop high fever, and with it, various things become red. So they get bloody eyes, red cracked lips and tongue, a rash on the body, red palms and soles, and swollen limbs.

Gupta: Some MIS-C patients showed similar symptoms. However, it is still unclear if there is a link.

Burns: It is not clear at this time that this new and very serious cardiovascular collapse we see is associated with Kawasaki disease. I don’t know. We are certainly trying to investigate and understand if there is a relationship. Because it will know more about how to handle it.

Gupta: It’s overwhelming to hear about all this. But the good news is that doctors say treatment is almost effective.

If you are a parent, note the unusual symptoms of your child-abdominal pain, vomiting, or fever that lasts for days, or a red rash on the body. You know your child best. If they don’t behave like themselves, contact your pediatrician.

Now, as I said, we still have much to learn about this syndrome. One of the remaining big questions is what is the link to Covid-19?

We will do the same for this new syndrome, as we are learning and treating coronaviruses at the same time.

After all, this is a new disease that we are rolling out in real time. And, as we have always said, we are learning together. All of us.

I’ll be back tomorrow. Thank you for listening.