Health chiefs won’t know what’s behind mysterious spate of hepatitis for months, experts warn

The cause of the mysterious child hepatitis outbreak sweeping the world won’t be known for months, a top expert warned today.

Close to 200 cases of hepatitis of an ‘unknown origin’ have been spotted worldwide since the peculiar pattern was detected in March, mostly in under-fives.

One child is confirmed to have died and another fatality in the US is currently being probed. At least 18 sickened youngsters have needed a liver transplant. 

None of the cases tested positive for normal hepatitis-causing viruses, which has left scientists puzzled about the origins of the disease.

Professor Alastair Sutcliffe, a leading paediatrician at University College London, told MailOnline health chiefs may not know the cause until later this summer.

‘With modern methods, informatics, advanced computing, real time PCR and whole genome screening, I would think finding the cause with some reasonable reliability will take three months,’ he said.

Professor Sutcliffe said solving the puzzle could take even longer if it is not just one single factor causing the outbreak. 

A common virus which normally causes the common cold, known as adenovirus, is thought to be involved.

But there are a number of conflicting theories about why the normally harmless virus is causing critical illness in young, previously-healthy children. 

Nearly 200 children have been sickened by the condition across the world in up to 14 countries since last October *cases in Canada, Japan and Wisconsin, Illinois and New York are still yet to be confirmed

Covid lockdowns may have weakened the immunity of children and left them more susceptible to the virus, or it may be a mutated version, experts say.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which is probing the cases in Britain, can’t definitively rule out that Covid itself is involved in some way.

Some 114 cases of the mystery hepatitis have been confirmed in the UK, which was the first country to detect an unexplained spike in cases.

There are 27 suspected and confirmed cases in the US, with seven announced in California yesterday. One child’s death in Wisconsin is being probed by officials.

Scientists have previously suggested cases could be just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, with more likely to be out there than have been spotted so far.

Professor Sutcliffe said the process of discovering the cause of the outbreak could be slowed by red tape across international boundaries, with difficulties in transporting biomaterials across countries.

Parental consent, data protection and laws regulating the use of human tissue in the UK could all act to slow research, he said. 

Searching for an unknown cause is especially hard because cases may have multiple factors behind them that are not consistent across all illnesses.

UK health officials have ruled out the Covid vaccine as a possible cause, with none of the ill British children having been vaccinated because of their young age. 

Covid lockdowns may be behind the mysterious spate of hepatitis cases in children because they reduced social mixing and weakened their immunity, experts claim

Liver experts described the spate of cases as ‘concerning’ but said parents should not worry about the illness affecting their children.

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) official said the disease was ‘quite rare’ but judged the risk to children as ‘high’ because of the potential impact.

The risk for European children cannot be accurately assessed as the evidence for transmission between humans was unclear and cases in the European Union were ‘sporadic with an unclear trend’, it said.

But given the unknown causes of the disease and the potential severity of the illness caused, the ECDC said the outbreak ‘constitutes a public health event of concern’.

The surge in hepatitis cases was first recorded in Scotland on March 31, with one child in January being hospitalised with the condition.

The Scottish case was dated back to January. 

At least one child has died of the mysterious disease so far, according to the World Health Organization.

Wisconsin is the only US state to report a suspected child death from hepatitis. If confirmed, it will be the second in the world. 

State officials confirmed to the DailyMail.com that the child had developed the disease after being infected with the adenovirus. 

Most of the infected children were under 10 and many were under the age of five. None had other underlying health conditions.

The agency recommended improving surveillance and hygiene practices to stop the spread of cases.