New Study Finds Possible Blood Vessel Damage In Childhood Cases Of COVID-19
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- There's some concerning news about COVID infections in children.
CBS2's Dr. Max Gomez reports a new study finds possible blood vessel damage even in mild childhood cases.
Early on in the pandemic, it looked like children might escape COVID-19 relatively unscathed, but now we've learned that kids can get infected with the coronavirus, spread the virus even without symptoms and, in more than a few cases, get seriously ill and even die.
Now, a new study in the journal "Blood Advances" finds that a high proportion of children infected with this coronavirus showed elevated levels of a blood marker tied to blood vessel damage -- and not just kids who were sick with COVID.
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"We were surprised to see, we also found that in some children who were incidentally diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 either came to the hospital for another reason and they were diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 and they had minimal to no symptoms," said Dr. David Teachey, one of the study authors from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
He says this type of blood vessel damage in children receiving bone marrow transplants can have lasting effects.
"Early hypertension -- that can lead to kidney disease, that can lead to early heart disease, things that happen years down the road but can be very significant," Teachey said.
Teachey emphasized that we do not know whether children infected with the coronavirus will suffer some of those long-term complications. He said he doesn't think they will but that more research is needed to understand the effects this virus has on children.
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