The family of a five-year-old Indiana girl speaks out after a rare inflammatory disease associated with the coronavirus that nearly claimed the child’s life.
Janiya Johnson’s health declined rapidly over a five-day period; Advocate Children’s Hospital told Fox News she was feverish, vomited, tired, had stomach pains and did not want to eat.
“She’s full of energy. She’s just ready to go,” said Johnathan Johnson, the child’s father, according to ABC 7. “And it was just different when she wanted to go to bed and go to sleep.”
Janiya Johnson (5) was diagnosed with a rare, coronavirus-related inflammatory condition called MIS-C.
(Courtesy of Advocate Children’s Hospital)
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Frequent visits to the doctors and urgent care left the family with no answers. However, blood work revealed that the child’s kidneys and liver were failing, and she was rushed to Advocate Children’s in Oak Lawn, a hospital in Chicago. There, doctors diagnosed her with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C. Much is unknown about this disease, but it usually develops a few weeks after coronavirus infection. MIS-C involves shock, heart function, abdominal pain and hyperinflammation. Children diagnosed with this condition often need critical care.
The child endured four days in the intensive care unit for children, but the hospital and the child’s parents have since ‘fully recovered’.
(Courtesy of Advocate Children’s Hospital)
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The child tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, according to ABC 7. although her family did not realize she had ever been infected. . Janiya’s parents, Oshunda and Johnathan Johnson, share the story so that parents can find answers and reach diagnoses faster.
“We were told by one of the doctors that if we had waited another day, they probably would not have been able to save,” Oshunda Johnson, the child’s mother, told Fox News. “Her liver and kidneys were so bad. She was really bad.”
Oshunda says her daughter is now “absolutely fine, 200% better.”
The child was treated with steroids and other anti-inflammatory drugs.
(Courtesy of Advocate Children’s Hospital)
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Dr Frank Belmonte, chief medical officer at Advocate Children’s Hospital, says MIS-C diagnosis is difficult because it has symptoms with less severe conditions. He says it mostly affects children under 14, and minority populations are responsible for about 70% of cases.
According to Belmonte, many children diagnosed with MIS-C need steroids or other anti-inflammatory drugs to reduce the harmful inflammation, reports ABC 7.
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More than 2.9 million children tested positive for COVID-19 in the U.S., according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, with 2,060 cases of MIS-C, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“To date, the majority of MIS-C patients have been Hispanic / Latino and non-Hispanic blacks,” the CDC said, pointing out that more research is needed to determine risk factors. Of the reported MIS-C cases across the country, 37% are among Spanish patients, while 32% and 22% are among black and white populations, respectively.