Covid vaccination may benefit children with asthma

Difficulty breathing, wheezing, chest tightness, persistent dry cough or feeling tired during physical activity… These are some of the symptoms that children with asthma experience. According to a new study published this Wednesday in the journal Covid, many pediatric patients in the US have seen their symptoms mitigated during the pandemic thanks to the Covid vaccine. JAMA Network is Open.

“He asthma It is one of the most common chronic diseases among children in the United States, with approximately Each year, 4.7 million children develop symptoms“Whether asthma is mild or severe, it impacts children’s quality of life, so anything we can do to help them avoid flare-ups is beneficial,” said lead study author Matthew M. Davis, executive vice president, chief medical officer, and chief scientific officer at Nemours Children’s Health.

In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, social distancing and school closures were thought to have led to fewer asthma flare-ups in many pediatric patients. Davis and study co-author Lakshmi Halasyamani, clinical director of Endeavor Health in Evanston, Illinois, wondered whether that benefit would extend to 2021, when the first Covid vaccines were being administered to adults and then children.

To conduct the study, Davis and Halasyamani compared changes in parent-reported childhood asthma symptoms between 2018 and 2019 and 2020 and 2021, and combined that data with statewide Covid vaccination rates among people ages five and up, as reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The researchers found that for every 10 percentage points increase in Covid-19 vaccination coverage, the number of childhood asthma symptoms reported by parents decreased by 0.36 percentage points.

States in the top 25% of overall Covid vaccination rates have had 1.7 percentage point reduction in asthma symptomswhich is nearly three times more favorable than states in the bottom 25% of overall Covid vaccination rates, which saw an average reduction in asthma symptoms of only 0.6 percentage points

in 2020-2021 compared to 2018-2019.

The authors explain that there are several factors that could contribute to the reduction in asthma symptoms. Community immunity, also called herd immunityin states with higher vaccination rates may have helped reduce the risk of children getting Covid and developing asthma complications. Another possibility is that children living in states with higher Covid vaccination rates may have been more likely to get vaccines soon after they were approved for their age groups.

The researchers say the findings also raise the possibility that Covid-19 vaccines could be effective against other diseases caused by coronaviruses, including cold.

“Vaccination against Covid-19 can provide direct benefits for children with a history of asthma, but this needs to be confirmed by further studies. It also raises the question of whether broader population-based Covid vaccination among children and adults could help protect children with asthma,” says Halasyamani.

The authors note that a limitation of the study is that did not specifically measure vaccination rates in children with asthmaAdditionally, although parent-reported data are considered a meaningful indicator of patient experience, additional data such as hospital stays or emergency department visits may be used to validate these findings.

On the other hand, a study published in the latest issue of the journal Scientific translational medicine shows the usefulness of a cancer drug in preventing irreversible organ damage that occurs in some cases of severe Covid.

According to their data, which is still preliminary, the drug eganelisib may be effective in stopping the immune system’s overreaction and inflammation associated with infection, which can cause serious damage to some tissues. This is because the drug inhibits the enzyme PI3K gamma, which is involved in the immune response and inflammation.