A team of researchers looked at why coronaviruses appear to be harmless to children. Your study has now been published.
Coronavirus infection can be particularly dangerous for high-risk groups such as the elderly, cancer patients or diabetes patients. Their immune systems are often too weak to successfully fight the viruses, which can lead to potentially fatal pneumonia.
Younger people can also become infected with the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen. Here, however, the disease is usually milder. But what happens when children get infected?
Novel lung disease COVID-19: "
According to the current state of knowledge, children are just as often infected with corona viruses as adults. However, with the crucial difference that they usually develop no or only slight symptoms *. To find the reason, an international team of researchers led by Qifang Bi from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore (USA) analyzed the data of Chinese patients .
When evaluating 391 COVID-19 cases, it was noticed that 91 percent of those affected showed only mild to moderate symptoms. On average, the patients were 45 years old and more than half are now considered healthy. The researchers also looked at 1,286 people around them . Seven to eight percent of their relatives or friends had contracted Sars-CoV-2 *. The researchers concluded that children were at the same risk as adults. " Children are just as likely to be infected, but they don't get sick, " Der Spiegel quotes one of the study authors, Justin Lessler of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Read also: If you suspect Corona, not to the doctor: How to behave correctly .
Does children's immune system respond less strongly to coronaviruses?
So far it was not clear whether children simply contract infections less often or whether their immune systems can cope better with the new type of corona virus. The researchers' study is an indication that the latter is true. One possible explanation for this is that the docking points through which viruses enter the body cell are not yet fully developed in children . There is also the thesis that their immune system responds less strongly to coronaviruses.
Relatively little reported coronavirus cases in children could also be due to the fact that they simply do not recognize a coronavirus infection because parents assume a common cold * due to mild symptoms.
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* merkur.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network .