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Since the early reports of a severe COVID-19–related condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children a few months into the pandemic, doctors and scientists have joined efforts to understand it, but its cause is still uncertain. According to a study published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation on May 25, researchers propose that it is brought on when viral particles in the gut of these patients make their way into the blood. They found that weeks after an initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, kids had viral RNA in their stool and antigens in their blood along with markers of a leaky gut, suggesting that the trafficking of antigens—specifically, the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein—from the gut to the bloodstream might be driving MIS-C.
This work “adds an additional perspective on the pathogenesis” of this syndrome, says Petter Brodin, a pediatric immunologist at the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska University ...
