Doctors in the US have anecdotal an increase in children who have been critically ill with the flu that develops serious, life -threatening neurological complications that can be characterized by epileptic seizures, delirium, hallucinations, reduced consciousness, lethargy, personality changes and abnormalities in the image of the brain.
It has been known for a long time that the seasonal flu can cause such devastating complications in some children, many without underlying medical conditions. But doctors have begun to suspect that this year's flu season – the most serious in more than 15 years – has taken a dark turn for children. On February 14, for example, health officials in Massachusetts released advice for clinicians to be alert to neurological complications in pediatric flu patients after detecting a “possible increase”.
With the anecdata that comes in, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed all the data it is talking about neurological complications of flu this year and seasons dating from 2010. Unfortunately, existing surveillance systems for the flu do not record neurological complications in pediatric cases in general – but they generally take pediatric cases but they take pediatric cases but they take pediatrunnas but they take pediavers but they take pediavers but they take pediavers but they take pediavers but they take pediavers in general. Clinical data fixed when a child of flu.
An analysis of that data, published today in the weekly report of the morbidity and mortality of the CDC, cannot definitively say that this year is of the norm. First, the flu season is not over yet. But the data so far suggest that it can be one of the more serious seasons in the past 15 years.
In particular, the CDC received reports from a serious neurological complication called flu-associated acute necrotizing encephalopathy (ane). Ane is a serious form of the more general category of influenza-associated encephalopathy or encephalitis (IAE), which means that brain is function or inflammation of the flu.
When a child dies from the flu, clinicians must fill in a standardized case report form from the CDC, which collects a wide variety of data, including complications. Encepalopathy or encephalitis are included as a check box on the form.
1,840 children died on the flu between 2010 and 8 February 2025. 166 of them had checked as a complication. IAE was most common in children from 2 to 4 years, but met children in all age groups under the age of 18. More than half of the cases (54 percent) had no underlying medical conditions, and most (80 percent) were not vaccinated against the flu.
