(Reuters) – The rare but life-threatening inflammatory syndrome seen in some children after a coronavirus infection has become even more rare with the Omicron variant causing most infections and more kids vaccinated, according to a new study.

Researchers looked at data from Denmark on more than half a million children and adolescents infected after Omicron became dominant, about half of whom experienced breakthrough infections after vaccination. Overall, only one vaccinated child and 11 unvaccinated children developed Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C), which causes inflammation in the heart, lungs, kidneys and brain after a mild or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. That translates to rates of 34.9 MIS-C cases per million unvaccinated children with COVID-19 and 3.7 cases per million vaccinated young COVID-19 patients, the researchers said in JAMA Pediatrics. By comparison, rates of MIS-C cases when Delta was predominant were 290.7 per million unvaccinated infected kids and 101.5 per million among the vaccinated who had COVID, they said.

The fact that MIS-C risk was significantly lower in vaccinated children suggests the vaccine is helping to keep the immune system from causing the deadly inflammatory reaction that is an MIS-C hallmark, the researchers said.

SOURCE: https://bit.ly/3NOR2T7 JAMA Pediatrics, online June 8, 2022.

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