Zhamankulov A, Rozenson R, Morenko M, Akhmetova U, Tyo A, Poddighe D. Comparison between SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative pneumonia in children: A retrospective analysis at the beginning of the pandemic. World J Exp Med 2022; 12(2): 26-35 [PMID: 35433317 DOI: 10.5493/wjem.v12.i2.26]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Dimitri Poddighe, MD, MSc, PhD, Associate Professor, Director, Doctor, Pediatrics, National Research Center for Maternal and Child Health, No. 32 Turan Avenue, Nur-Sultan 010000, Kazakhstan. dimitri.poddighe@nu.edu.kz
Research Domain of This Article
Infectious Diseases
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Adil Zhamankulov, Rafail Rozenson, Marina Morenko, Ulzhan Akhmetova, Alina Tyo, Department of Children's diseases, Astana Medical University, First Children's Municipal Hospital, Nur-Sultan 010000, Kazakhstan
Dimitri Poddighe, Clinical Academic Department of Pediatrics, National Research Center for Maternal and Child Health, University Medical Center, Nur-Sultan 010000, Kazakhstan
Author contributions: Zhamankulov A and Rozenson R conceived the study; Zhamankulov A, Morenko M, Akhmetova U, Tyo A collected and provided the data; Zhamankulov A and Poddighe D organized and analyzed the data; Rozenson R, Morenko M, Poddighe D provided intellectual contribution; Zhamankulov A and Poddighe D wrote the manuscript; all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: Institutional Review Board Statement: The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by local Ethics Committee [protocol No. 2020.3.7 approved by Local Bioethical Committee of NJSC (Astana Medical University)] in agreement with the ethical principles of the State Standard for Good Clinical Practice and Regulatory Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan "On Science", State Educational Standard of the Republic of Kazakhstan 5.01.024-2008 "Scientific Research").
Informed consent statement: Informed consent was obtained from guardians of all patients involved in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: Dataset can be available upon request.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Dimitri Poddighe, MD, MSc, PhD, Associate Professor, Director, Doctor, Pediatrics, National Research Center for Maternal and Child Health, No. 32 Turan Avenue, Nur-Sultan 010000, Kazakhstan. dimitri.poddighe@nu.edu.kz
Received: October 30, 2021 Peer-review started: October 30, 2021 First decision: December 27, 2021 Revised: December 29, 2021 Accepted: February 27, 2022 Article in press: February 27, 2022 Published online: March 20, 2022 Processing time: 137 Days and 1.6 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
Even though coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) clinical course in children is much milder than in adults, pneumonia can occur in the pediatric population as well.
Research motivation
To report a single-center pediatric case series of COVID-19 from Kazakhstan during the first wave of pandemic.
Research objectives
To analyze the main clinical and laboratory aspects in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) positive and negative children diagnosed with pneumonia.
Research methods
Retrospective analysis of 54 children, who were medically assessed because they were close contacts of COVID-19 adults in their family setting, between June and September 2020. The clinical and laboratory characteristics of children affected with pneumonia in the presence (group 1) or absence (group 2) of SARS-CoV-2 infection, were compared.
Research results
No significant differences were found between the study groups for any clinical and laboratory parameters, except for C-reactive protein. Both pneumonia groups showed higher C-reactive protein values than COVID-19 children without pneumonia, overall; however, the COVID-19 pneumonia group 1 showed a significantly higher increase of C-reactive protein compared to group 2 (SARS-CoV-2 negative pneumonia).
Research conclusions
In our case series of children assessed for SARS-CoV-2 infection based on contact tracing, the acute inflammatory response and, in detail, C-reactive protein increase resulted to be more pronounced in COVID-19 children with pneumonia than in children with SARS-CoV-2 negative pneumonia.
Research perspectives
Larger, controlled and more complete clinical studies are needed to verify the different aspects of (acute) systemic inflammation in children with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia.
