SARS Seems to Hit Children Less Hard than Adults: Research

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, April 29, 2003

SARS Seems to Hit Children Less Hard than Adults: Research

Children with SARS appear to suffer milder symptoms than adults and older teenagers and also may be less infectious to other people, according to a preliminary study by Hong Kong doctors.

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Children with SARS appear to suffer milder symptoms than adults and older teenagers and also may be less infectious to other people, according to a preliminary study by Hong Kong doctors.

A team led by Professor Tai Fai Fok of the Department of Pediatrics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong studied the first 10 children who received treatment for SARS during the early phase of the epidemic there.

The children, who were aged from 18 months to 16 years, were admitted to the Prince of Wales and Princess Margaret hospitals between March 13 and 28.

The doctors found two remarkably different sets of problems according to the age of the child.

The five teenage patients, who were aged between 13.2 and 16.4 years, had symptoms that were akin to adult cases, with muscle aches, headaches, chills and respiratory distress that in four of them required oxygen assistance.

But the five younger patients, aged between 18 months and 7.5 years, were not so badly affected. They suffered the typical SARS symptoms of fever, coughs and runny noses, but no worse; and none required breathing assistance.

"Our preliminary findings suggest that young children develop a milder form of the disease, with a less aggressive clinical course than do teenagers and young adults," the doctors wrote.

They noted that as of April 25, there had not been a single childhood death from SARS anywhwere.

Another intriguing find was that young children seem to be less infectious than adults.

"Eight of the 10 children had been attending school at the time of presentation. There was no evidence that they had spread the infection to their classmates. This finding is in sharp contrast to the experience reported among adults that SARS carries a very high infectivity rate."

Lab tests were carried out on samples from the patients that confirmed they had the coronavirus believed to cause Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

The study was fast-tracked for publication by the British publication The Lancet in the light of the worldwide concern about SARS.

The authors stress that a wider study, involving a bigger number of patients, would be needed to confirm their findings.

Source: agencies

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