Results
A total of 141 children between 3 and 17 years of age met the inclusion criteria. Of them, 99 patients agreed to participate or could be contacted. Of these, 52 (52.5%) were female. The median age was 10 years (interquartile range, IQR = 13-5). Sixty patients (60.6%) had mild infections and were controlled as outpatients, while 39/99 (39.4%) required hospitalization. Likewise, 14 (14.1%) children required admission to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) during their hospital stay. The most frequently observed clinical diagnosis was mild respiratory infection in 23 children (23.2%), followed by pneumonia in 18 children (18.2%) and febrile syndrome in 17 cases (17.2%). It is worth highlighting the frequency of MIS-C, which reached 10.1% of cases. On the other hand, 11 asymptomatic children (11.1%) were diagnosed in the context of family contacts (Figure 1).
The prevalence of asthma in our study ─defined as affirmative response to question 6 of the ISAAC questionnaire─ was 11.1% (11/99). The prevalence of asthma in children who required admission increased to 17.9% and to 21.4% in patients requiring PICU. In contrast, the frequency of asthma in outpatients children with milder disease was 6.7%, although the difference did not reach statistical significance (p=0.079). There were also no statistically significant differences in the prevalence of asthma according to the gender, the clinical diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection or the family history of asthma or atopy.
However, we found a significant association between the use of salbutamol during the past year and the need for admission (23.1% in hospitalized patients vs 3.3% in outpatients) with an OR = 8.7, 95% CI 1.7-42.8. Likewise, these patients who needed salbutamol in the past year, had a four times higher risk of requiring PICU admission (28.6% vs 8.2%, OR = 4.5, 95% CI 1.1-17.9). A statistical association was also found between admission for SARS-CoV2 and budesonide treatment in the last year (17.9% vs 1.7%, OR = 12.9, 95% CI 1.5-109.5) or budesonide treatment at any time (30.8% vs 13.3%, OR = 2.9, 95% CI 1-7.9) (Table 1).