The Nutritional Preponderance and Propensity to COVID-19 in Children

Abstract

Aims & Objectives: Nutrition plays a very important role in the Immunity and Immunoregulation in children. The risk of acquiring an infection is very high in malnourished and underweight children, which is what we venture out to find out in our study by researching the susceptibility for COVID-19 in children and comparing it with their nutritional status.

Materials & Methods: Our Tertiary Childrens hospital had 46 COVID positive children admitted in 2020, the nutritional status analysis, showed that there were four children 8.6% (n=4) in Obese category, 19.5%, nine (n=9) children were Overweight, 17.39 %, 8 children Underweight (n=8) and 25 children were 54.3% well nourished.

Results: This case series describes the various features in COVID-19 in children with and without co-morbidities primarily focusing on the nutritional profile. This is the first single centre case series globally on COVID-19. Our cohort showed no significant relation between COVID-19 and the nutritional status. We saw an equal distribution of COVID-19 in children irrespective of their nutritional status at admission.

Conclusions: We did not notice any statistical significance in the age group or the nutritional status in children infected with COVID-19.