Canada (Commonwealth Union) – Ebola is a zoonotic virus initially discovered back in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was known as Zaire at the time. New research on ways Ebola affects children during an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo indicate that children may be as susceptible to the disease as adults, despite regularly showing more subtle physical symptoms, which is a significant detail for doctors presently treating pediatric patients with the virulent disease, and when potential outbreaks occur.
University of Alberta (U of A) scientist and a senior author on the study, Michael Hawkes, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics, stated that any pediatrician would say that children are not little adults and their response to disease is different, further saying that we are at the center of an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, making this information vital to manage children with Ebola in hospital.
The research was carried out with a retrospective chart review of pediatric patients together with a contrast group of young adult patients. According to Hawkes, since Ebolavirus outbreaks usually take place in low-resource settings, there generally is not much laboratory testing taking place. The unique amount of laboratory data from the DRC outbreak permitted scientists to take key components from those charts and more completely identify how the disease presents in children.
“Given the subtle presentations kids often have, or the lack of reporting of their subjective symptoms, we were curious to see if they had a similar severity in their lab findings that show their organs are truly affected by this disease,” explained first author on the study, Lindsey Kjaldgaard, a pediatric resident at the U of A. “We ended up concluding that this is truly the case.”
The data demonstrated that pediatric patients had a larger viral load when admitted and an elevated peak viral load, taking more time for the virus to fully clear from their bloodstreams, leading to an increased hospital stay.
