UPMC: Study finds link between COVID and neurological symptoms in hospitalized children
For hospitalized children who tested or were presumed positive for COVID-19, 44% developed neurological symptoms, a new study led by a pediatrician-scientist at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found.
Published in the journal Pediatric Neurology, the preliminary findings from the study indicated that the most common neurological symptoms were headache and altered mental status, known as acute encephalopathy.
The study was a first finding from the pediatric arm of GCS-NeuroCOVID, an international, multi-center consortium studying how COVID-19 affects the nervous system and the brain.
Lead author Ericka Fink, M.D., pediatric intensivist at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and associate professor of critical care medicine and pediatrics at Pitt, explained that the COVID-19 virus can affect children in different ways.
COVID-19 can cause acute disease, where symptomatic illness comes on soon after infection, and it can result in an inflammatory condition called MIS-C, or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, weeks after clearing the virus.
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