Study provides reassurance, but longer follow-up needed
Commenting on the study, pediatric cardiologist Devyani Chowdhury, MD, director of Cardiology Care for Children in Lancaster, Pa., said that overall it provided reassurance that most children do recover from MIS-C – and fits with her own clinical experience of the condition – but cautioned that longer-term follow-up was still needed.
“Three months is really not long term for a child,” Dr. Chowdhury said in an interview. “I’ve had a couple of patients whose MRIs have not normalized even after 1 year.”
Dr. Chowdhury also noted that it was a relatively small sample size, and it was also not yet possible to work out what host factors might play a role in increasing the risk of longer-term effects of MIS-C.
“I think it is a disease in evolution and we have to give it time, but in the very short term at least these kids are not dying, they are recovering, going home, and returning to activity and the heart is getting better,” she said.
The study authors suggested their findings could provide an evidence base for recommendations on when children with MIS-C can return to sports and physical activity, given that current consensus statements on the issue treat MIS-C as being equivalent to myocarditis in adults.
Dr. Matsubara noted that the cardiac outcomes of MIS-C were very different from those in COVID-19–affected adults, where echocardiography and MRI show longer-term evidence of myocardial impairments.
“This finding is also different from that of adult COVID-19, where the high troponin is reported to be the prognostic factor,” he said, suggesting this could explain different mechanisms of myocardial injury between MIS-C and COVID-19 myocarditis.
One author was supported by the National Institutes of Health. No conflicts of interest were declared.