UK’s first child with acute hepatitis dies

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced this Saturday death of a sick kid from acute hepatitis in United Kingdom. The agency also reported that it has detected 169 cases in 11 countries of this outbreak that, for the moment, continues to have an unknown origin. Spain accumulates 13 cases and Catalonia has confirmed two.

Most of the cases have been recorded in Europe. Specific, United Kingdom has reported 114 sick children. Nevertheless, USA has recorded nine cases and Israel, 12, has been reported by the WHO, which has also given recommendations to deal with this health alert.

The organization has reported that 17 of the affected children (approximately one in 10) have required a Liver transplant after contracting this new disease. Its origin is unknown, although experts from the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) suggest that the cause could be the infectious agent Adenovirus 41. The most notable symptoms of this outbreak are abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting.

The WHO points out that it is not yet clear if there has been an increase in cases or if it is a normal pattern that had not been detected until now. However, they have expressed concern about the fact that an adenovirus, normally associated with ailments mild respiratorymay be causing acute liver inflammation.

The age of those affected currently ranges between one month and 16 years, in most cases they do not have fever, and in none of them have the normal viruses associated with these ailments been detected (hepatitis A, B, C, D and E), has detailed the WHO.

The first 10 cases of this acute hepatitis were reported by the United Kingdom to the WHO on April 5, in previously healthy children under 10 years of age. Adenoviruses have been detected in 74 of the cases (18 of them specifically with adenovirus 41, previously rarely linked to cases of hepatitis), and in twenty patients the children also tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the covid