Why COVID-19 is Less Frequent and Severe in Children: Understanding the Immune Responses
Author(s): Priyadarshini Singh, Lokesh Vaishnav, Shiv Joshi, Abhishek Joshi* and Ashok Mehendale
Abstract
Background: Currently countries all around the globe are experiencing the pandemic caused by the deadly virus SARSCoV- 2, which is proving itself to be a huge burden on the intensive care facilities of the globe and causing a large proportion of untimely deaths all across the world. It has been seen that the number of children who come in contact with the COVID-19 virus have milder course of the disease and the extent of infection is also less frequent as that of the adult patients. We have tried to search and discover some causal evidences for this problem present in front of us.
Data sources: An extensive search strategy was designed to identify papers on COVID-19 and a systematic literature review was carried out using MEDLINE, PubMed, Google scholar, EMBASE databases.
Results: The searches assembled 60 applicable articles. The evaluation discovered that youngsters accounted for a decrease percentage of the stated instances and in addition they experienced a much less intense route of illness. Children have relatively stronger innate immunity because of trained immunity which has possibly resulted in early manage of contamination on the site of entrance. Unlike the children, older patients display a relatively depressed immunity including both cellular and humoral as well as innate immunity thereby mounting a much lower immune response. These per chance may be associated with other systemic diseases being present in the elderly. A rapid regeneration potential of alveolar epithelium in the pediatric age group might have a contributing element to a faster healing of the infection. Even so children presenting with other ailments might be a high risk unit who are in the need of cautious monitoring.
Conclusion: With all the references taken into consideration and all the data explored, the conclusion states that the pediatric population exhibit a naturally strong innate immunity and mount a relatively higher fighting response against the virus as compared to the infection and its response found in the adult population. Thus the recovery will be rapid and occur in a relatively less time frame.