Eight major epidemics of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection (COVID-19) were observed between January 2020 and March 2023. Since the sixth wave (January 2022), when the Omicron strain became the mainstream of the epidemic, the number of pediatric patients with COVID-19 has increased rapidly, and the number of severe patients has also increased accordingly. As of November 2022, 103 patients with COVID-19-associated acute encephalopathy have been reported, with acute encephalopathy with biphasic seizures and late reduced diffusion (AESD) (27 cases, 26.2%) and clinically mild encephalitis/encephalopathy with a reversible splenial lesion (MERS) (9 cases, 8.7%) being the most frequent. There were 18 patients with cytokine storm encephalopathy (17.5%), including eight with hemorrhagic shock and encephalopathy syndrome (HSES), six with encephalopathy with acute fulminant cerebral edema (AFCE), and four with acute necrotizing encephalopathy (ANE). These frequencies were higher than those reported in 2017 for ANE (2.8%) and HSES (1.7%), before the COVID-19 outbreak. The prognosis of COVID-19-related acute encephalopathy was poor (11 deaths, 10.7%) owing to the high frequency of HSES and AFCE, which have a severe clinical course.
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