Evaluation of the clinical and laboratory findings of asthmatic children with SARS CoV-2 infection

ABSTRACT

Background: There are a limited number of studies about the clinical findings of coronavirus infection in pediatric patients with asthma. We aimed to evaluate the clinical and laboratory characteristics of pediatric patients with asthma and healthy children without chronic disease who were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Method: This is a retrospective, case-control study comparing the children diagnosed with asthma and healthy children who were diagnosed with COVID-19 in our hospital between March,11 and November,10 2020. Results: During the study period, 6205 children were diagnosed with COVID-19 in our hospital. Only 54 (0.87%) patients had a diagnosis of asthma. The mean of the age was 10.7 years and 53.7% (n29) of the patients with asthma were male. Cough, shortness of breath, emesis and diarrhea were found to be significantly higher in asthma group than in the control group (respectively p = 0.002,0.000, 0.002, 0.019, 0.015). Patients who were given SABA were significantly higher in asthma diagnosed patients (p = 0.000). There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of oxygen treatment and hospitalization requirement. There was no significant difference in laboratory findings between groups. Conclusion: This study revealed that pediatric patients diagnosed with asthma were in mild clinic state and the clinic of COVID-19 was not different between the groups. According to these findings, asthma may not be a risk factor for the development of COVID-19 and may not affect the course of the disease in children. (Table Presented).