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. 2017 Aug 7;15(1):60.
doi: 10.1186/s12969-017-0192-y.

Changes in clinical and laboratory features of Kawasaki disease noted over time in Daejeon, Korea

Hong-Ryang Kil  1 , Jae-Won Yu  1 , Sung-Churl Lee  2 , Jung-Woo Rhim  2 , Kyung-Yil Lee  3
Affiliations

Changes in clinical and laboratory features of Kawasaki disease noted over time in Daejeon, Korea

Hong-Ryang Kil et al. Pediatr Rheumatol Online J. .

Abstract

Background: Kawasaki disease (KD) becomes one of the common diseases in Korea. Changes in clinical features and laboratory findings of KD were evaluated over a period of 10 years.

Methods: We reviewed the medical records of KD patients and compared the clinical and laboratory features of two KD patient groups: those admitted from 2000 to 2004 (group A, 284 cases) and those admitted from 2010 to 2014 (group B, 331 cases).

Results: There were a total of 615 KD patients (mean age: 29.7 months; male-to-female ratio = 1.6:1), including 228 incomplete KD patients. Incomplete KD patients had milder values in some laboratory indices. The preadmission and total fever durations were longer in group A than in group B. The proportion of incomplete KD was higher in group B, but incidence of coronary artery lesions (CALs) was lower. For laboratory indices, the C-reactive protein and follow-up platelet values were lower, and the hemoglobin and albumin values were higher in group B. The same clinical and laboratory findings were confirmed in the KD subgroups; those with the same fever duration of 5 or 6 days and same ages, those with complete KD, and those with incomplete KD in the two different time periods.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that clinical features of KD tend to be milder over time and manifest in a higher incidence of incomplete KD, lower incidence of CALs, and less severe laboratory findings in recent KD patients in Korea compared with their historic counterparts.

Keywords: Clinical signs, coronary artery lesions; Epidemiology; Kawasaki disease.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

At the time of admission, the written informed consents were obtained from the parents/caregivers of all children for the medical records to be used in this study. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Chungnam National University Hospital (2016–11-022), and Institutional Review Board of The Catholic University of Korea Daejeon St. Mary’s Hospital (DC16RIMI10062).

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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