Unusual Manifestations of Kawasaki Disease in the COVID Era: A Case Series and Review of the Literature.

Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute medium-vessel vasculitis, mainly affecting infants older than six months and children under five years. It predisposes to the development of coronary artery aneurysms and constitutes the leading cause of acquired heart disease in children. Its diagnosis is based on clinical criteria, namely, fever lasting for ≥ five days together with at least four of the five principal clinical features of the disease. Occasionally, children with KD present with fever, but they fulfill only some of the five principal criteria, and this is described as incomplete KD. Furthermore, "atypical" KD is a term that is usually used for cases that appear with rather unusual clinical manifestations, which complicate clinical judgment and may delay diagnosis and treatment. In this case series, we present four cases of KD with rather unusual clinical features: a five-year-old boy with lobar pneumonia, a six-year-old girl with orange-brown chromonychia appearing on the 10th day of the disease, a 2.5-month-old infant with prolonged fever and urinary tract infection, and an 18-month-old infant with refractory KD and high suspicion of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). A literature review on the unusual manifestations of atypical KD was performed to identify clinical findings that must alert the clinician to consider this clinical entity.

Association between childhood asthma and history of assisted reproduction techniques: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Genetic and environmental factors during early development may influence lung growth and impact lung function. We performed a meta-analysis of epidemiological studies examining the association between conception history of assisted reproduction techniques (ART) and childhood asthma. We searched PubMed and Embase up to November 2020 for relevant observational studies and synthesized data data under a fixed or random effects model as appropriate. Heterogeneity was assessed using the I2 metric. We identified 13 individual studies including 3,226,386 participants. We did not observe a statistically significant association between ART and physician-diagnosed asthma (n = 9, random OR 1.16; 95% CI 0.94-1.43; I2 61%). We observed a statistically significant association between ART and prescription of asthma medications (n = 6, fixed OR 1.27; 95% CI 1.23-1.32; I2 0%). Wheezing was also associated with ART (n = 4, fixed OR 1.71; 95% CI 1.08-2.72; I2 0%). When we combined studies using any asthma definition, a statistically significant association was observed (random OR 1.19; 95% CI 1.05-1.34; I2 80%).Conclusion: The available observational evidence suggests that the risk of asthma is higher among children born after ART. The mechanism and potential sources of bias behind this association are under scrutiny, and further work is needed to establish causality. What is Known: • "Positive" epidemiological signals for the association between assisted reproduction techniques and asthma stemming from large studies were not replicated by subsequent research. • Any available research synthesis effort so far bears no quantitative aspect. What is New: • The available observational evidence suggests that the risk of asthma is higher among children born after ART. • The mechanism and potential sources of bias behind this association are under scrutiny.

Low-birth-weight, but not catch-up growth, correlates with insulin resistance and resistin level in SGA infants at 12 months.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the insulin resistance status in SGA infants at 12 months and its relationship with auxological and metabolic parameters. METHODS: One group of 45 SGA and one of 50 appropriate for gestational age infants were followed from birth to the end of the first year of life. At 12 months, skinfold thickness, waist circumference, and blood levels of glucose, insulin, adiponectin, leptin, resistin, visfatin, retinol-binding protein 4, IGFs, lipids profile were determined, and the HOMA-IR index was calculated. RESULTS: The SGAs had increased insulin (5.2 ± 2.7 versus 2.9 ± 2.4 µIU/ml, p = 0.012) and HOMA-IR (1.09 ± 0.9 versus 0.59 ± 0.55, p = 0.016). In multiple regression, insulin resistance indices were independently correlated with low-birth-weight (ß = -2.92, p = 0.015 for insulin, ß = -2.98, p = 0.011 for HOMA-IR) but not with catch-up growth in either height or weight or any other metabolic parameter. Resistin was higher in the SGAs (5.1 ± 2.1 versus 3.9 ± 2.1 ng/ml, p = 0.03) and independently correlated with low-birth-weight but not insulin resistance. Resistin was negatively correlated with total cholesterol (R = -0.33, p = 0.007) and positively with lipoprotein(a) (R = 0.49, p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: Low-birth-weight, but not catch-up growth or adiposity tissue hormones, was correlated with insulin resistance at 12 months in non-obese SGA infants. The higher resistin in SGA infants and its correlation with total cholesterol and lipoprotein(a) need further clarification.