THE Covid-19 virus may lead to new therapies

4 min readDec 5, 2020

Observing how children and infants respond to the virus may lead to new therapies for Covid-19.

This doesn’t mean that babies cannot get severe symptoms. Alvaro Coronado Munoz, MD, a doctor specialized in pediatric critical care and an assistant professor at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston, learned that lesson when he and his colleagues treated a three-week-old boy who was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit in with low blood pressure, tachycardia, rapid breathing, and hypothermia. He had presented nasal congestion for two days and had an X-ray consistent with Covid-19 infection. A nasal swab confirmed the diagnosis.

“It was one of the first cases reported in the U.S. of critical care admission of a pediatric patient with Covid-19. It was very early in the pandemic and there was all this information regarding the fact that pediatric patients were less affected, so it was a little bit of a surprise,” says Munoz. The boy had to receive mechanical ventilation for five days and survived after intensive care. “This case was very important to recognize that an infant can become as sick as adult patients. So, don’t just assume that it’s something else.”

Observing how children and infants respond to the virus may lead to new therapies for Covid-19. One of the treatment strategies that is being explored is how to combat a harmful type of inflammation sometimes seen in the acute phase of the infection. “We hope to learn from ongoing studies that certain inflammatory pathways are differentially activated in children with mild infection compared to adults with severe disease. Maybe then we can develop more targeted immunomodulating therapy that we can apply to those with more severe illness, including adults,” says Mithal.

Another avenue of research is looking at the strong initial interferon response, which is probably critical for early antiviral defense and is a system that the SARS-CoV-2 directly interferes with, according to Brodin. This is most likely a mechanism that protects babies and children and it is possible that triggering the same response in adults could help protect them as well.

omplications, one issue that has been setting babies apart from older children is the incidence of the multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a recently identified condition associated with the novel coronavirus. Although rare, this is a serious and potentially fatal condition that appears after the Covid-19 infection in which different parts of the body become inflamed. So far, it has been identified mainly in older children, with a large percentage of cases concentrated in five-to-nine-year-olds, according to data by the CDC.

“There is probably something about the infants’ immune system that may not predispose them to post-infectious inflammatory conditions like these,” says Mithal. Experts are still trying to figure out why some kids are affected and not others, and there are reports of babies with the syndrome. But, once again, it seems that infants’ immune systems are especially equipped to dodge the novel coronavirus’ threats.

THE Covid-19 virus may lead to new therapies

Written by Natasamalkovaclub