Increase in hepatitis of unknown origin in children | Hacker News Reader

Increase in hepatitis of unknown origin in children

rte.ie

110 pointsputtycat104 comments

Last week’s WHO emergency announcement of the same issue: https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/a...

Top suspects are both viruses: Sars-Cov-2 (COVID-19) and adenovirus 41. But the real cause could just as easily be something else that hadn’t been detected yet. It’s just too early to be certain.

I don’t see why sar-cov-2 would be suspect given it has been running around for a good 2 years already. Unless there is a suspected lower base rate and the sheer speed at which BA.1/2 rips through the population.

Bacteria occasionally intermingle and swap DNA. Most such mutations are not viable, but occasionally you end up with the odd survivor.

This gets more interesting with viruses in the mix. When two viruses infect the same host that later gene transfers items genes the viral payload can end up joining.

It’s a weird, fascinating, and somewhat horrifying (conceptually) process.

See: https://youtu.be/GzCLp1KBf4Q

Why Sars-Cov-2 is a suspect:

1) Many of these hepatitis patients tested positive for Sars-Cov-2 when they arrived at the hospital for hepatitis.

2) Sars-Cov-2 is changing fast. Just in the last few months it has changed substantially several times. Increased hepatitis risk in kids might be one of those changes.

3) The usual causes of hepatitis were not present, and no better explanation has been found yet.

Investigation still in progress. Might be one of these two viruses. Might be something else that hasn’t been detected yet.

1) Many people have Covid - so many people of any category also have Covid. (random sampling, correlation, ... yada yada)

2) All viruses are changing fast ... that doesn't mean they suddenly produce totally new types of symptoms.

3) Hepatits can have soooo many reasons - it literally means just inflammation of the liver - can be almost anything

> 2) All viruses are changing fast ... that doesn't mean they suddenly produce totally new types of symptoms.

COVID variants were already observed to trigger totally new types of symptoms.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Also, liver damage (or multiorgan failure) is hardly a "totally new type of symptom" for covid

https://www.elsevier.es/en-revista-annals-hepatology-16-arti...

It's world-wide, here is AL in US: https://www.alabamapublichealth.gov/blog/2022/04/nr15.html

Cases of Auto-immune hepatitis following COVID vaccination have been reported. This link should at least be investigated.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34225251/

"We hope that our report does not deter COVID vaccination drives. However, we also hope to raise awareness of its potential side effects and the increased role of pharmacovigilance in guiding treatment."

If that's the case it would appear to be unrelated to this as all the children in the UK experiencing it aren't vaccinated.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/increase-in-hepatitis-liv...

Important quote: "There is no link to the COVID-19 vaccine. None of the currently confirmed cases in the UK has been vaccinated."

They are not vaccinated.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/update-hepatitis-u...

This is unrelated, as none of the confirmed cases involved vaccinated children.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/increase-in-hepatitis-liv...

If we're going to throw out baseless accusations, then why not the Ferrero candy factory that was ordered closed after failing to disclose a salmonella outbreak? https://nypost.com/2022/04/08/candy-factory-that-makes-kinde...

Same countries affected: "Spain, Britain, Ireland and United States" for the Ferrero case, and [UK, Ireland,] "Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands, as well as the United States" for the hepatitis cases.

(edit: link that explicitly mentions the initial detection of salmonella in december: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/04/kinder-chocolate-reca...)

> If we're going to throw out baseless accusations

How is what he posted a baseless accusation? There's quite literally a base to it: a study published by the NIH. Did they edit their comment?

It is baseless considering the hepatitis cases, in the original submission, are affecting _children_ under 5, for whom there is absolutely no covid vacination programmes.

I would say that's a correction needed for their understanding of the context, more than a baseless accusation.

This article never says 5 years old children, what it says is:

"Scottish health authorities had initially reported 10 cases of acute hepatitis in children aged under 10 --on 5 April--, the origin of which was not established".

"--" are mine. Some of those children weren't vaccinated, most had less than 5 years old but not all. At least in Spain some were aged enough to receive a vaccine. As it seems that some adults had liver problems after being vaccinated, and that some of the cases could be still undiscovered, the question is valid and the hypothesis deserve further discussion.

Maybe are we missing some additional info that does not appear here?

Ok i have a question. Since I got covid I get extremely tired after drinking one bottle of wine and almost sick if i drink more than that with no drive at all for the full day and I feel somethi g is pushing near the liver. I thought it was muscular as it is not painful at all. I feel overall i became really weak to alcohol because of covid. I could drink one bottle of wine and run in the morning before. Should I worry?

Why in tarnation are you asking the comments on Hackernews for medical advice?

Doesn't everybody get potentially life changing medical advice from Hacker news?

I found my favorite probiotic via offhand HN comment buried deep in a subthread.

Link?

Why in tarnation...

If we learned anything in the last two years, we learned some number of people will seek and follow medical advice from anyone except medical professionals.

That seems like a question for your doctor, not random internet people.

When you have a list of symptoms you want to ask the internet about it’s probably something you should ask your doctor about instead. If that turns out to be useless then ask the internet.

I can’t give you medical advice, but if you’re being literal, a whole bottle of wine is a lot - 100ml+ of pure alcohol. Depending on your weight it’s basically halfway to an alcoholic coma.

If you’ve been drinking at that rate you should definitely pay your doctor a visit.

Depends enormously on a persons tolerance. Lemmy (from Motörhead) used to drink a bottle of Jack a day with no noticeable effects. This is probably not recommended though.

I think though if you get severe side effects from drinking a bottle of wine (beyond a hangover) then you should probably not do that, speak to a doctor and continue to not do that until a doctor tells you otherwise.

that sounds pretty puritan, I can tell you aren't European, Aussie/NZ, or Canadian

I'm European and weigh around 70 kg but a bottle of wine is definitely not a light drink. To me, it's somewhere between medium and heavy drinking, depending on how fast I drink it and the ABV.

You're generalising wildly. I'm from NZ, and drinking an entire bottle of wine sounds pretty crazy to me.

depends a lot on the context too. Over an evening with meals I don't think a bottle of wine is that much. Downing the bottle is another thing

You shouldn't throw all of Europe into one pot. Drinking culture is radically different in different countries, and even in different regions in the same country.

Sounds like a Saturday night!

1 bottle of wine is 6 small glasses - roughly equivalent to 3 UK pints of premium strength lager. What we in the UK might consider 'a start' (for a big night out)

A handy guide from our National Health Service: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-advice/calculating-alco...

You're allowed 1 and a half 'Saturday nights' a week!

Not to minimize but in some cultures a bottle of wine might be viewed as an aperitif frankly. My brother in law used to drink 3 or 4 full bottles before he got stuck into his serious drinking. I'm glad to say he eventually kicked alcohol altogether. But the point stands: it isn't necessarily too much for some people to physically handle. It really depends on the human in question.

Your brother in law was already serious drinking when he was dri king 3-4 bottles of wine at a time.

A bottle of wine and maybe a couple beers keeps me pleasantly drunk for the night. It's not exactly moderate drinking, but I think you'd be surprised how many people can comfortably drink that amount over the course of a night. Not going to pretend it's good for you, but my liver levels and everything else are in great shape in spite of nights like that.

To the original point, if I suddenly started having any kind of pressure or discomfort in the liver region after having even one drink, I'd be in the doctor's office ASAP. It might just be gas or it might be something much worse. It isn't worth waiting around to find out

Everybody has different alcohol limits sheesh

Don't be silly. A bottle of malbec or Cabernet sauvignon is only a good start. Half litre of Black Label after a good dinner, that's another thing.

A bottle of wine should be enough to make anybody lethargic!

Had COVID ten days ago, noticed the same symptoms. Feel fine in general, but two glasses of wine made me feel like I'm dying. Seems like others have noticed the problem, but fortunately it's not causing widespread (adult) liver failure. https://www.kevinmd.com/2021/03/could-a-glass-of-wine-diagno...

have hepatitis - pre covid drinking could be not great - post covid I can't drink a drop - feel the worst I've ever felt for days on end

Possibly thiamine deficiency. Thiamine is required to metabolize glucose and heavy drinkers have this deficiency. Covid seems to have a similar effect. Get your daily 100-200mg B1 HCL for a while and see if it improves. If you suspect liver, try betaine.

Your best bet would be to talk to an actual doctor. They should be able to run tests that can gauge your liver function levels.

Since the liver is the body's primary blood filtration system, pretty much anything that disturbs the normal bodily processes puts a strain on the liver. My mother had a near-zero tolerance for alcohol for almost a decade, while struggling with post-viral CFS in the 90s.

I wouldn't immediately worry about your alcohol tolerance following sickness, but do see a physician if it takes more than a few months (say, 4-6) to return to your previous "default" state.

(and yes, IANAD, IANYD, TINMA and all the usual disclaimers about seeking Internet advice)

As update an Adenovirus has been claimed as candidate of interest.

And was happening since 2021 also in a case not related with neither European war or weather

https://www.uab.edu/news/health/item/12805-new-adenovirus-st...

Nasty. New Virus or variant?

Hepatitis is simply an inflammation of the liver, so could be anything

This is unreasonably dismissive.

It’s unclear. In other reporting on this it’s been reported that several of the cases where in children who had recently tested positive for Covid, so there could be a link there, but there were just as many who didn’t test positive so it could be coincidental. Even more of them tested positive for an adenovirus, though it’s unclear if it’s a new adenovirus or variant. There’s also speculation that perhaps that due to Covid preventative measures, there are more children whose immune systems haven’t been primed the way they normally would and it’s manifesting itself this way in response to viruses that aren’t novel.

But at this point it all seems to be speculation and there doesn’t seem to be any thing like a definitive answer.

Covid increases blod knots coagulation in adults. Is there any link from covid to hepatitis?

meta comment. If you want to see flagged comments go to your profile and:

`show dead: yes`

Having said that I'd prefer flagging to be used only for spam and the like. No one holds rights to what is or is not misinformation.

I really wish this board did away with flagging. It seems to just censor people far more than anything. I've had my own tech related submissions flagged because they obviously just piss someone off around here and it never gets unflagged or even reviewed from what I can tell. I know I am missing out on other people's content and opinions as well and I don't like having some self appointed "moral police" around here deciding that for me.

Flagging is very easy to game.

Maybe if we all get into that game, then it will stop.

Most of the flagged comments I've seen are low quality, off topic, or violating the code of conduct. Flagging is a mechanism of distributed moderation. And there is a system where high-karma users can vouch for a comment and have it reappear.

Also, anyone can opt in to see flagged comments. So they aren't being completely hidden off the site unless they get nuked from the backend.

I disagree that “no one holds rights to what is or is not misinformation” - if we take that position to its end, then we must accept that all places for public discussion are subject to being overrun by trolls or vocal minority opinion. Strong communities need strong moderation lest they devolve into lesser communities.

edit: My opinion is based somewhat on "Well-Kept Gardens Die by Pacifism"[0].

[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-...

Agreed entirely. Honestly i wish they'd go further and do away with upvotes too. Though i have no idea if that's actually a good idea. I just loathe anything that takes the form of modern "forums" like Reddit, where upvotes seem to drive circle-jerk communities and everyone is at war due (in part perhaps) to the artificial conflict that "Like" scores seem to drive.

Overrun by a minority is an interesting twist. I suppose it is fine, as long as HN is not overrun by the majority, homogeneous opinion. That would be a dull experience without dissent.

Minority opinions are pushed down to the bottom of the page due to how the voting system works. There's no reason why they should also be completely hidden to anyone willing to scroll down. That's a fate that should only go to actual spam.

My opinion is based on the entire scope of documented and written human history.

But if you think that one article by some internet person proves you right, then that's ever more the case that we should not do what you suggest.

Is this an actual response? This argument has no substantiation, just character attack. It's clear you didn't make any effort to read the article or consider its implications. It is clear you are not arguing or participating in good faith.

Is it possible that the mrna vaccines are impacting the liver in some way?

It seems most of them are not vaccinated at all, so that's probably not a factor.

Ajoo posted this in another part of the thread, but in the UK none of the children with this have been vaccinated so no, it is not possible.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/increase-in-hepatitis-liv...

If they were vaccinated, it would be possible, but they are not.

According to ECDC, "with most of these cases aged between 2 and 5 years" - children under 5 are not vaccinated.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/update-hepatitis-u...

Must be because of the all the shedding from the vaccine carriers then!

/s, I'd like to think, but I have no doubt the tinfoil hat brigade will link this to vaccines somehow.

For those who don't know what he's talking about, one of the things that did show up fairly often in the more conspiracy minded anti-vaccination circles was that vaccinated people shed mRNA into the surrounding environment, often accompanied by a claim that this mRNA makes surrounding unvaccinated people sick and this is really why unvaccinated people were so massively more likely to get seriously ill or die during the delta and omicron waves.

I haven't seen that lately though. I think much of that crowd has moved on to other theories, like that COVID isn't even caused by a virus. For instance one I've seen a few times recently is that it is caused by the government (or the elites or the Jews or the Democrats) putting snake venom in the water supply. Such claims are often accompanied by an offer to sell some form of protection against that snake venom, usually consisting of buying the offerer's particular supplements.

If you want to see a good sampling of these kinds of things, head over to /r/HermanCainAward and browse the "awarded" and "nominated" posts. Don't read the comments there because they are often quite mean, but just reading the submission itself is quite enlightening.

Thank you for the explanation.

Yes, but the fact that some bunch of idiots think that vaccines can make you grow a third head is not a proof that vaccines can't do any harm. That would be a logical fallacy.

Many good treatments are known still to be harmful for a small number of people with rare genetic combinations. The concept of reasonable risk is accepted in medicine.

So It must be checked still (removing this people from the equation and focusing in the know verified facts, instead to dismiss it by ad-hominem).

> Vaccinated people shed mRNA into the surrounding environment.

They do. But in tiny enough amounts not to make people sick.

Vaccinated people do shed virus enough to make surrounding people sick, with unvaccinated people at greater risk, especially when these vaccinated do not mask, or do not get sick enough to isolate.

This topic and any discussion around it was carefully demonized, making it so even people like Luigi Warren could not get the information out that mRNA can be shed by the vaccinated.

The fervent anti-vaccination activists only got more fuel for their fires, with officials downplaying any talk of shedding or ADE. And then they blamed their rhetoric on the vaccine hesitant.

> COVID isn't even caused by a virus.

It took a lot of decades for scientists to come to the same conclusion about the Spanish "flu" pandemic.

The snake venom thing is of course an extreme outlier. If that is what you think you are "up against" with the anti-vaxxers and vaccination hesitant, you can not understand the merits of the other camp's views. The very fact check for the snake venom thing has this to say:

> But, as we’ve explained before, scientists in China first isolated the virus that causes COVID-19 on Jan. 7, 2020. Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. then isolated the virus later that month, from a patient who was diagnosed with the disease in Washington state. And scientists in other countries have also isolated the virus. The World Health Organization announced the official name of the virus — SARS-CoV-2 — on Feb. 11, 2020.

Do you really think scientists in China first isolated the virus in 2020? It seems a rather definitive and factual claim, certainly welcomed by the Chinese regime and the narrative they want to support. Head over to the 4chan archive to see multiple posts discussing isolating a novel coronavirus with weird characteristics in the late months of 2019. It is there, and harder to argue against, and quite enlightening to say the least.

I'd imagine sarcasm isn't taken well here.

Were the kids vaxed?

From the article:

> In a statement, it said "no link to the Covid-19 vaccine was identified and detailed information collected through a questionnaire to cases about food, drink and personal habits failed to identify any common exposure."

So… maybe?

The first article I read about this during the weekend mentioned that none of the UK children had been vaccinated. Sadly I couldn't find it but this one (https://theconversation.com/hepatitis-cases-are-increasing-a...) claims the same.

Father to 2 children in the UK here. My 10 year old has only JUST been offered the vaccine, my teenager was only offered it a month ago.

So very unlikely these children were vaccinated given the age ranges.

Very unlikely, they are too young.

This article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2315740-mystery-outbrea... - states the kids were aged 2 to 5, which is too young for the vaccine.

That doesn't mean they weren't. The article just doesn't say. I don't know about the UK, but in the U.S., because of the EUA, many younger people got vaccinated before the vaccine was approved for their age group, therefore the question is fair.

No, you're absolutely right. But being in the UK (and the vaccine being provided by the NHS) does mean it's highly, highly unlikely that they were vaccinated as it has not been offered to the under 5s.

In the uk they weren't.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/increase-in-hepatitis-liv...

Vaccinated*, and can you specify which vaccination you mean specifically?

I mean tons of people got all the vaccinations but for some reason draw the line at the Covid-19 one(s). I mean I get some reluctance with the new mRNA types, but there's "traditional" types as well, and so far there are no statistically significant side effects to the mRNA types.

I mean I say so far, personally I'm already convinced, but for the skeptics, how long will you wait to see if there's any long term effects?

10-20 years

> Vaccinated*

'Vaxxed' is perfectly cromulent.

Maybe related with the desert dust that fell over most Europe just in the same weeks with the rains and could have some harmful substance or organism with them.

I assume that the Russians did not caused anything nasty in Chernobyl that we aren't aware still, or that the war didn't bring some nasty substances to Europe via clouds and rain but... trust but verify.

But the US cases are an outlier.

Sahara dust is pretty common thing in Europe. And if that was the case, wouldn't it be worse in the countries the dust came from?

Perhaps not, assuming they were exposed to it their whole lives, and have immunity to the local microorganisms. For a more relatable example, don't drink the water in Mexico, even if you see the locals drinking it.

Sahara dust is a thing that's been happening for hundreds of thousands of years, so I don't think that's anything to worry about (it's a valuable source of phosphorus for nature / farming as well). You're reaching for explanations btw.

You don't need to worry about unknown radioactive exposure. We have a very good monitoring system that will detect even very minor releases once they become distributed. The reporting channels in the west are trustworthy too.

In addition we have widespread atmospheric monitoring as well. You can circumvent that by releasing only substances that are not watched, but I don't think that's that easy, and you'd have to do it intentionally. Eg anything connected with fire will show up.

Radiation poisoning would present very differently from Hepatitis.

After checking it, it seems that in low doses can cause it, there is even a medical term for that (RILD):

https://radiopaedia.org/articles/radiation-induced-liver-dis...

But I could be wrong

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33204807/

Some viruses that cause acute hepatitis are transmitted by water. And could be in a different genus than Hepatitis virus like Epsein-Bar; Is not impossible also that we would face a different new virus moving with the dust from one of the African endemic areas.

In any case liver troubles mean normally poison troubles, using a broad definition of poison, or immunitary problems

I just realized that I'm forgetting also that in this particular period we had the most massive migration of people in Europe since WWII. This could also be a facilitator in the path faeces-water-oral.

If it was covid I assume that the problem would be detected before and would appear widespread by in all continents at the same time. Hitting much harder the countries with more number of Covid cases.

But what we have instead is a (mostly) Atlantic European issue. (Spain, Denmark, Ireland, Scotland. Looks like a pattern here [1]). Europe had only two rare global events in this time interval that I am aware, the dust affecting the Western countries of Europe (if I'm not wrong), and the war.

[1] (Scomber fish migration?... probably not, but also happened in this time and all hypotheses are valuable).

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