Scientists at Rockefeller University, New York, have discovered how three faulty genes may be implicated in the severe inflammatory syndrome observed in some children with COVID-19, similar to Kawasaki disease.
Most children infected with SARS-CoV-2 had few or no symptoms, however, one in 10,000 fell suddenly ill about a month after a mild infection, with inflamed hearts, lungs, kidneys, and brains, spiked temperatures, skin rashes, and abdominal pain.
This rare condition was termed multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).
'The patients are sick not because of the virus,' said Rockefeller geneticist Professor Jean-Laurent Casanova. 'They're sick because they excessively respond to the virus.'
Publishing their findings in Science, scientists describe how mutations in three closely related genes controlling the OAS-RNase L pathway, which is involved in viral response, fail to control the immune systems assault on SARS-CoV-2, leading to the inflammatory overload characteristic of MIS-C.
Find out more in the Rockefeller University press release.
