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©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Pediatr. Nov 8, 2016; 5(4): 391-396
Published online Nov 8, 2016. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v5.i4.391
Published online Nov 8, 2016. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v5.i4.391
Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus disease is rare in children: An update from Saudi Arabia
Jaffar A Al-Tawfiq, Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare, Dhahran 31311, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Jaffar A Al-Tawfiq, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN 46202, United States
Rana F Kattan, Department of Pediatric, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, King Abdullah Specialist Children’s Hospital, Riyadh 11514, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Ziad A Memish, Ministry of Health, Riyadh 1151, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Ziad A Memish, College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, Riyadh 11514, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Author contributions: Al-Tawfiq JA developed the research protocol, performed the research and data analysis; Al-Tawfiq JA, Kattan RF and Memish ZA authored and approved the article.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no competing interests to declare.
Data sharing statement: The dataset as presented in tables is available upon request to the corresponding author.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Ziad A Memish, Professor, College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, P.O. Box 54146, Riyadh 11514, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. zmemish@yahoo.com
Telephone: +966-50-5483515 Fax: +966-11-2616464
Received: May 27, 2016
Peer-review started: May 30, 2016
First decision: July 6, 2016
Revised: August 16, 2016
Accepted: August 27, 2016
Article in press: August 29, 2016
Published online: November 8, 2016
Peer-review started: May 30, 2016
First decision: July 6, 2016
Revised: August 16, 2016
Accepted: August 27, 2016
Article in press: August 29, 2016
Published online: November 8, 2016
Core Tip
Core tip: The number of the pediatric Middle East respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is low and the exact reason for the low prevalence is not known. A total of 31 pediatric MERS-CoV cases were reported since June 2012. Of all the cases 13 (42%) were asymptomatic and the male to female ratio was 1.7:1. The mean age of patients was 9.8 ± 5.4 years.The most common source of infection was household contact followed by infection within a health care facility. Using real time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction of pediatric patients revealed that 9 out of 552 (1.6%) was positive in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.