Press release
Tuesday, March 2, 2021
The National Institutes of Health has launched a new research effort to understand how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, affects children, who account for approximately 13% of all COVID-19 cases in children. United States. The effort is called Collaboration to assess risk and identify long-term outcomes for children with COVID (CARING for Children with COVID). This research program is developing and funding studies to investigate why some children have a higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection than others, why symptoms vary among infected children, and how to identify children at risk. of suffering from serious diseases of SARS-CoV -2 infection. Research on the latter issue focuses especially on multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a life-threatening condition marked by severe inflammation of one or more parts of the body, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, the brain, skin, eyes and gastrointestinal organs.
The program is run by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Research conducted through CARING for Children with COVID is supported in part by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Financial Security Act.
“This effort stems from NIH’s commitment to understanding the risk spectrum that SARS-CoV-2 poses to children and to identifying interventions to improve their short- and long-term outcomes for health,” he said. director of NICHD and CARING for Children with COVID president Diana Bianchi, MD
According to current data, most children with SARS-CoV-2 infection do not develop serious illnesses. However, those who continue to develop MIS-C may experience prolonged fever and severe abdominal pain and may progress to shock. Although most children with MIS-C survive, its cause and long-term effects remain unknown. There is also early evidence that some children with asymptomatic or mild infection may develop long-term symptoms such as fatigue, muscle and joint pain, and respiratory problems.
“While much of the devastation caused by COVID-19 occurs in large and vulnerable populations, it is affecting children in ways we are just beginning to understand,” said Gary Gibbons, MD, NHLBI director and co-chair of CARING for Children with COVID. “That’s why this research and these networks are so critical.”
Specifically, the program developed new research protocols for three clinical networks with sites across the country, to include children with SARS-CoV-2 infection and related conditions, including MIS-C:
CARE for children with COVID also includes predicting the severity of virus-associated inflammatory diseases in children with laboratory diagnosis and artificial intelligence (PreVAIL kIds), a research funding program to encourage the development of approaches that identify children at high risk of developing MIS-C. PreVAIL kIds is funded by NIH’s Radical Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) Radical (RADx-rad) program to support new non-traditional approaches and reinvented uses of existing tools to address gaps in COVID-19 testing and surveillance. .
Although the studies supported by CARING for Children with COVID have slightly different objectives, they will all collect data on a basic set of health measures that can then be analyzed through the studies. CARING for Children with COVID data will be made available on various NIH web platforms to allow researchers to perform additional analyzes and make further discoveries.
You can learn more about the effort on the CARING for Children with COVID website at https://caring4kidswithcovid.nih.gov.
About the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD): NICHD conducts research and training to understand human development, improve reproductive health, improve the lives of children and adolescents, and optimize abilities for all. For more information, visit https://www.nichd.nih.gov.
Regarding the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI): NHLBI is the world leader in conducting and supporting research into heart, lung and blood diseases and sleep disorders that advance scientific knowledge, improve public health and save lives. For more information, visit https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov.
Regarding the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
NIH, the country’s medical research agency, includes 27 institutes and centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the leading federal agency that conducts and supports basic, clinical, and translational medical research and investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
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