• Elmira Haji Esmaeil Memar, Morteza Heidari, Homa Ghabeli, Elham Pourbakhtyaran, Roya Haghighi, Seyyed Mohammad Mahdi Hosseiny, Setareh Mamishi, Shima Mahmoudi, Hamid Eshaghi, Ali Reza Tavasoli, Mahmoud Mohammadi, Shervin BadvRezaRDepartment of Pediatric Neurology, Pediatrics Center of Excellence, Children's Medical Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran., Gholamreza Zamani, Masood Ghahvehchi Akbari, Bahram Yarali, Rohola Shirzadi, Masoud Mohammadpour, Bahareh Yaghmaei, Meisam Sharifzadeh Ekbatani, Zeynab Najafi, and Mahmoud Reza Ashrafi.
• Pediatrics Center of Excellence, Children's Medical Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
• Arch Iran Med. 2023 Mar 1; 26 (3): 166171166-171.

BackgroundCOVID-19 infection and its neurological manifestations were seen in children although less common than adults. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of different types of neurologic findings of hospitalized children with COVID-19. ].MethodsThis retrospective study was performed on hospitalized pediatric patients aged≤18 years with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 at Children's Medical Center Hospital. Neurological manifestations were defined as the presence of any of the following symptoms: seizure, altered mental status, behavioral/personality change, ataxia, stroke, muscle weakness, smell and taste dysfunctions, and focal neurological disorders.ResultsFifty-four children with COVID-19 were admitted and their mean age was 6.94±4.06 years. Thirty-four of them (63%) were male. The most frequent neurological manifestation was seizure (19 [45%]) followed by muscle weakness (11 [26%]), loss of consciousness (10 [23%]), and focal neurological disorders (10 [23%]). Other neurological manifestations consisted of headache (n=7), movement disorders (n=6), behavioral/personality change (n=5), ataxia (n=3), and stroke (n=3). Twenty-nine percent of our patients had leukocytosis. A neutrophil count above 70% was seen in 31% of participants. Among our patients, 81% had a positive reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test for SARS-CoV-2.ConclusionDuring the current pandemic outbreak, hospitalized children with COVID-19 should be evaluated for neurological signs because it is common among them and should not be under-estimated.© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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