The vaccine against COVID-19 in children has already been approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to be administered to children between 5 and 11 years of age. This measure taken a few days ago comes just when a study has stressed the importance of vaccinating children with asthma, because according to their work, those with poorly controlled disease have up to six times more risk of being hospitalized for infection with SARS- CoV-2.
The research, which has been published in the journal The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, has analyzed 752,867 school-age children, of whom 8.4% had diagnosed asthma, 6.8% tested positive for COVID-19 by PCR test and 1.5% required hospital admission due to infection.
Putting all these data in relation, it was found that children between 5 and 17 years old who had asthma but without control, that is, who had needed to be hospitalized for this disease or had been prescribed two or more cycles of oral steroids in the last two years, were 3 to 6 times more likely to require hospitalization if they contracted COVID-19, compared to those with no or controlled asthma.
Prioritize children with asthma for vaccination
Although the authors have highlighted that the risk of developing severe COVID-19 in children is very low, “prioritizing this group of children for vaccination against COVID-19 has important implications for the administration of vaccines worldwide, by reduce the risk of this infection and its associated diseases and, consequently, the need for children to lead as normal a life as possible at school”.
Children with uncontrolled asthma had a 3- to 6-fold increased risk of being admitted with severe COVID-19 if infected with SARS-CoV-2
In addition, they have clarified that the general risk of children with asthma having a severe coronavirus is low, with a rate of 1 in 380 children with poorly controlled asthma. Based on these data, the authors have estimated that there were 9,124 children aged 5 to 17 years with poorly controlled asthma in Scotland who could have benefited from COVID-19 vaccination during the study period, and approximately 109,488 children across the UK. .
The researchers stressed that their study has some limitations, such as reliance on surrogate markers of recent admission for asthma or prescription of oral steroids, which may not accurately identify children with poorly controlled asthma. Study co-author Ting Shi believes further analysis is needed to understand the underlying mechanisms that put children with asthma at increased risk of hospitalization.
In addition, he explained that “although COVID-19 tends to affect children less severely than adults, the findings underscore the importance of carefully monitoring these children if they become infected with COVID-19 and ensuring that children take their preventive inhalers regularly, get asthma check-ups and have an up-to-date asthma action plan.”
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