COVID 19-associated chilblain-like acral lesions among children and adolescents: an Italian retrospective, multicenter study.

BACKGROUND: Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, great interest has been given to this disease, especially to its possible clinical presentations. Besides classical respiratory symptoms, dermatological manifestations occur quite often among infected and non-infected patients, particularly in children. A prominent IFN-I response, that is generally higher in children compared to adults, may not only cause chilblain lesions, but it could also prevent infection and viral replication, thus justifying the negative swab results, as well as the absence of relevant systemic symptoms in positive cases. Indeed, reports have emerged describing chilblain-like acral lesions in children and adolescents with either proven or suspected infection. METHODS: Patients aged from 1 to 18 years old were enrolled in this study from 23 Italian dermatological units and were observed for an overall period of 6 months. Clinical pictures were collected along with data on the location and duration of skin lesions, their association with concomitant local and systemic symptoms, presence of nail and/or mucosal involvement, as well as histological, laboratory and imaging findings. RESULTS: One hundred thirty-seven patients were included, of whom 56.9% were females. Mean age was 11.97±3.66 years. The most commonly affected sites were the feet (77 patients, 56.2%). Lesions (48.5%) featured cyanosis, chilblains, blisters, ecchymosis, bullae, erythema, edema, and papules. Concomitant skin manifestations included maculo-papular rashes (30%), unspecified rashes (25%), vesicular rashes (20%), erythema multiforme (10%), urticaria (10%) and erythema with desquamation (5%). Forty-one patients (29.9%) reported pruritus as the main symptom associated with chilblains, and 56 out of 137 patients also reported systemic symptoms such as respiratory symptoms (33.9%), fever (28%), intestinal (27%), headache (5.5%), asthenia (3.5%), and joint pain (2%). Associated comorbid conditions were observed in 9 patients presenting with skin lesions. Nasopharyngeal swabs turned out positive in 11 patients (8%), whereas the remainder were either negative (101, 73%) or unspecified (25, 18%). CONCLUSIONS: COVID-19 has been credited as the etiology of the recent increase in acro-ischemic lesions. The present study provides a description of pediatric cutaneous manifestations deemed to be potentially associated with COVID-19, revealing a possible association between acral cyanosis and nasopharyngeal swab positivity in children and teenagers. The identification and characterization of newly recognized patterns of skin involvement may aid physicians in diagnosing cases of asymptomatic or pauci-symptomatic COVID patients.

Varicella-like exanthem associated with COVID-19 in an 8-year-old girl: A diagnostic clue?

It has been reported that the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) may be associated with a papulovesicular skin eruption predominantly involving the trunk. We hereby present a case of COVID-19-associated varicella-like exanthem in an 8-year-old girl with mild systemic symptoms.

Rare and common manifestations of COVID‐19 in children

Introduction It has been almost 2 years since the first reports on cutaneous manifestations of COVID‐19. Those reported in children are different and include macular, papular, lichenoid, vesicular, urticarial, and vascular morphologies, among others. The prognosis of isolated cutaneous involvement in COVID‐19 in children is usually self‐limiting but the extreme variety of clinical presentations complicates the clinical approach. Methods Numerous reviews have been systematically drafted and edited giving the clinicians a future direction for skin presentations during pandemics. Results and Discussion Hereby we report the rare and common manifestations of COVID‐19 in children and question the recurrence phenomena and age‐related distribution of the eruptions. Age distribution of SARS‐Cov‐2 positive or suspected paediatric patients (0−18 years) observed in our centre during the first pandemic spread categorized by cutaneous manifestations. In the lower part of the figure, boxes correspond to the highest frequency rate of patients with the clinical characteristics mentioned. Lateral strings include all the sample spans. CLLs, chilblain‐like lesions (COVID toes);EM‐like, erythema multiforme‐like;MIS‐C, multisystem inflammatory syndrome;PLEVA‐like, papular‐purpuric dermatitis of childhood.

Papulo-purpuric dermatitis of childhood: a distinct PLEVA-like eruption associated to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Clinical, histopathological and immunohistochemical study of 10 cases.

We observed ten children with a papular eruption with purpuric features during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Northern Italy (May-December 2020). Histological examination showed signs of SARS-CoV-2-related dermatosis. Evidence of nucleocapsid viral proteins using SARS-CoV-2 (2019-nCoV) nucleocapsid antibody revealed cuticular staining of the deep portion of the eccrine glands in all cases.

Chilblain-like lesions in children following suspected COVID-19 infection.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, chilblain-like lesions have been reported in mildly symptomatic children and adolescents. We present four children investigated for suspected COVID-19 infection who presented with acral skin findings and mild systemic symptoms. Histology from one case showed signs of vasculitis with evident fibrin thrombus.