
CDC to learn more as well as to discuss how states can undertake surveillance for such cases,” he said. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers, said the organization knows of the cases in the U.K., but had not been made aware there were similar cases in this country.
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“We have seen a full spectrum of cases from severe hepatitis to acute liver failure,” she told STAT in an email. One of the children required a liver transplant, the newspaper said.Īs in the U.K., the children in Alabama were quite sick, said Helena Gutierrez, medical director of the pediatric liver transplant program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The newspaper El País reported Wednesday that Spain had detected three cases, all in children between the ages of 2 and 7. To date, five of the children have tested positive for Type 41, Landers said.Īs word of the condition spreads, it is possible additional cases will be found. Genetic sequencing is underway to try to identify if one or multiple types of adenoviruses are implicated. There are a range of adenoviruses that can infect people. That’s what really stood out to us in the state of Alabama.” “Seeing children with severe in the absence of severe underlying health problems is very rare. “It is not common to see children with severe hepatitis,” Landers, who has been a pediatrician for 45 years, told STAT in an interview. have also not found links among the cases there. Karen Landers, district medical officer for the Alabama Department of Public Health, said the cases were found in various parts of the state, and investigations to date have not found links among the children. In an alert to doctors the Alabama public health department issued in early February, it mentioned being aware of a case in another state, but it did not give details. In a statement issued late Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is working with Alabama on its investigation into the cases, and is working with other state health departments to see if there are other cases elsewhere. But they have been linked to bladder inflammation and infection, and occasionally to hepatitis, though rarely in children who are not immunocompromised. Adenoviruses generally attack the respiratory tract, causing cold-like illnesses. and from Alabama - where nine cases have been recorded since last fall - points to the possible involvement of an adenovirus. Public health officials in the United States and the United Kingdom are investigating a number of unusual cases of serious hepatitis in young children, the cause or causes of which are currently unknown.Įvidence from the U.K.

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