key: cord-333092-78vo7i6v
authors: Taksande, Amar
title: Myocardial dysfunction in SARS-CoV-2 infection in infants under 1 year of age
date: 2020-08-11
journal: World J Pediatr
DOI: 10.1007/s12519-020-00384-y
sha: 
doc_id: 333092
cord_uid: 78vo7i6v

nan

I have read an interesting study by Sun et al. [1] published in the June 2020 issue of the World Journal of Pediatrics. The authors studied the SARS-CoV-2 infection in infants under 1 year of age in Wuhan City, China. Li et al. [2] reported that the prevalence of malnutrition in elderly patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was high, and nutritional support should be strengthened during treatment. The authors reported that 25% of infants had an underlying disease in the study. Have they noticed any signs of malnutrition (wasting or stunting) in these infants? Sirico et al. [3] mentioned that the virus has a strong impact on the cardiovascular system, and cardiac imaging will play a significant role in patients affected by COVID-19. The authors mentioned in the results that cough (77.78%) was the most common clinical manifestation, that atrial septal defect was present in 2.78% of cases, and that 19.4% of infants had myocardial damage. Have the authors used any cardiac biomarkers, such as troponin-T or echocardiography (tissue Doppler imaging), to assess myocardial function in the infants? Have they ruled out the congenital heart defects in all the infants with SARS-CoV-2 infection? The authors found that 61.11% of infants have bilateral pneumonia and that 41.67% have received antibiotics treatment. What about the rest of them? Whether they received only antiviral and traditional Chinese medication? Liu et al. [4] mentioned that procalcitonin and hs-C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is used to assess the severity of pneumonia in combination with sepsis in newborns, but procalcitonin is more strongly related to the severity of sepsis than is hs-CRP. The authors found that the inflammatory marker CRP and procalcitonin were elevated in 19.44% and 67.74% of infants, respectively. This means that procalcitonin is a better indicator of inflammation than CRP in infants with SARS-CoV-2 infection. To my knowledge, this is the best study of the SARS-CoV-2 infection in infants under 1 year of age carried out by the author.

Author contributions TA drafted and revised the manuscript, and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Funding None.

Ethical approval Not needed.

The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.

SARS-CoV-2 infection in infants under 1 year of age in Wuhan City

Prevalence of malnutrition and analysis of related factors in elderly patients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

Cardiac imaging in congenital heart disease during the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic: recommendations from the Working Group on Congenital Heart Disease of the Italian Society of Cardiology

Detection of serum procalcitonin and hypersensitive C-reactive protein in patients with pneumonia and sepsis