Kawasaki disease sub-groups

Kawasaki’s disease (KD) and Atypical Kawasaki’s disease (AKD) always concerned the Archivist. Many children with fever, lymph nodes and a rash do not have KD and recover fully from their viral illness. Occasionally a diagnosis of KD would be missed and a child would end up with the well-known coronary artery sequelae. Wang H et al (Lancet Child Adolesc Health 2023;7: 697–707. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-4642(23)00166-9). have examined 1016 patients with KD and identified four subgroups. They have used a data driven approach to examine the possibility that KD is not a single disease entity. They analysed clinical data from patients with Kawasaki disease diagnosed at one centre in USA over a ten-year period. Patients were grouped by hierarchical clustering based on 14 variables, seasonality, including age, day of illness at the first intravenous immunoglobulin infusion, test results, and echocardiographic measures of coronary artery diameters when diagnosed. In a small...
Source: Archives of Disease in Childhood - Category: Pediatrics Tags: Miscellanea Source Type: research