Mysterious Children's Hepatitis Has Now Spread to 11 Countries. Here's What We Know

At least one child has died of a mysterious disease that has been identified in nearly 170 children across 11 countries in recent weeks, according to the World Health Organization.

This is what we know so far.

Where has it been detected?

The first five cases were flagged in Scotland by clinicians, who realized they were seeing something unusual, said Meera Chand, director of clinical and emerging infections at the UK Health Security Agency.

The children did not have any of the five known hepatitis viruses, according to a presentation by the children's doctor.

Scottish doctors would normally see four to five unknown hepatitis cases a year, she said.

In an update on the weekend, the WHO said that the United Kingdom had reported 114 cases.

Spain had the highest number of cases with 13, followed by Israel with 12 and the United States with nine, while small numbers have been recorded in other countries.

Who has been affected?

The mystery disease has affected children from one month to 16 years old, but most cases have been under 10 years old. Most of the people were previously healthy.

Before the children showed signs of severe hepatitis, they had symptoms that included vomiting and abdominal pain.

The main concern is the strain's severity, according to Maria Buti, a pathologist in Barcelona and chair of the European Association for the Study of the Liver.

She told Agence France-Presse that 17 of the 169 children had severe hepatitis and needed a transplant.

The cases were really worrying, according to Aikaterini Mougkou, an anti-microbial resistance expert at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

She told the emergency presentation that it was not clear if more children had mild cases because their symptoms were not traced.

We don't know how to prevent and treat it because we don't know the cause.

What has been ruled out?

It is rare in healthy children to have hepatitis.

The experts said that no common exposure seems to link patients, and the WHO ruled out international travel as a factor.

There is no link between overdoses of paracetamol and failure of the liver.

Most of the children weren't old enough to be jabbed, so there was no link to the vaccine.

The WHO said that common viruses that cause a range of sicknesses like colds, but mostly do not lead to severe illness, were detected in 74 of the cases.

In the UK, 75 percent of patients had adenoviruses.

She said the leading hypothesis was a combination of a normal adenoviruses along with another factor making it more severe.

One possibility is that young children who have spent their formative stages under COVID measures have not built up immunity to these adenoviruses.

The rates of adenoviruses in the UK plummeted during the early stages of the epidemic but have rebounded since the measures were lifted.

The WHO said that there has been an unexpected increase in adenoviruses cases in several countries.

Other possible causes for the unknown strain could be a combination of adenoviruses and COVID.

Nineteen of the 169 cases had at least one of the twoviruses.

Buti said she expected the results within a month.

What can you do?

COVID measures work well against adenoviruses because they are an infectious disease.

She asked doctors to look out for signs of jaundice.

Agence France-Presse