Did your child have Kawasaki Disease?

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Hi!

My son was finally diagnosed with Asperger's (although through research I am starting to wonder if it might have started out more like Autism than Asperger's) when he was 12 years old.

He contracted Kawasaki Disease when he was 15 months old, May 1995. And actually, that is when he was diagnosed, when they finally figured out after several months of severe illness that he had Kawasaki Disease.

Into the hospital for Immuno-Globulin.

What I'm wondering is, what is the prevalence of children with Autism/Asperger's/PDD-NOS who also had/have Kawasaki Disease (I wrote "have" because I don't know that it ever truly goes away or if once you have it then you always have it, just not the acute phase).

So, whose kids with Autism/Asperger's/PDD-NOS also had/have Kawasaki Disease?

Thank you so much!!
Diane Dennis

My son got very ill when he was 3 yr old.....they treated him for scarlet fever, but what bothered me was that he tested negative for Streptococ.....So after doing some research of my own I was confinced that he had had Kavasaki.....I believed it so strongly that I paid for a heart sonar just to make sure his heart was fine.....They then said he had Koksaki (?) virus and then allergies.....Anyway, till today, nobody knows.....

I don't think it's common, because I don't recall anyone asking this before.

My son did not / does not. That I know of.

Hi!

That was one of the concerns about my son, they were wondering about scarlet fever. He went through *ell and one of the things they did when they still didn't know what it was, they gave him two HUGE antibiotic shots in the front of his thighs, one in the left thigh and one in the right. He screamed and then stopped breathing.

Although it's still considered somewhat of a mystery disease, the latest thoughts (that I know of anyway) are that it's caused by untreated strep throat (it very much resembles Rheumatic Heart Disease which I believe is tied to strep throat but I could be mistaken about how it's caused).

It looks like the strep throat goes away but it's actually gone "inside" and starts attacking the body from there.

I looked up Coxsackie virus and it has a lot of similarities to Kawasaki Disease but there are also differences. One main being that with Kawasaki Disease the fever doesn't respond to fever-reducing medications, it stays at 104+ for several days no matter that you give him/her Tylenol, Motrin, whatever...

Anyhow, thank you for posting! I'm curious to find out how many kids that had Kawasaki Disease also have Autism/Asperger's/PDD-NOS or like symptoms.

Have a great day!
Diane

Nope.

Hi!

Thank you for writing back!

I'm wondering if it could be that it hasn't been brought up here yet because it hasn't been "connected". I don't think that all kids (or even a majority of kids) that have an ASD had Kawasaki Disease but I'm curious as to how many kids that did have Kawasaki Disease were also eventually diagnosed with an ASD, or vice versa how many kids with an ASD also had Kawasaki Disease.

I'm starting to see very occasional references (not here at WrongPlanet) to Kawasaki and ASD's, and there are even articles/essays that talk about the damage that Kawasaki can do to the brain causing some ASD-like symptoms (and even attention problems which I would think could be like Attention Deficit Disorder). This (damage to the brain) wasn't part of the list of possible complications when my son had Kawasaki, it was all about the heart.

Here's a copy and paste of some results of a study of kids (including siblings) with and without Kawasaki Disease (KD):

The KD group attained higher behavioural scores [note from Diane: "higher behavioral scores" in this case means "worse" behaviors] within the internalising sub-categories of somatic problems (KD 61, HC 57, SC 54) and withdrawn traits (KD 56, HC 53, SC 51). The KD group were also shown to be suffering more thought problems (KD 57, HC 53, SC 50) compared with the controls. Further difficulties relating to conduct (KD 3.3, HC 1.4) and social interactions (KD 6.7, HC 8.3) are also highlighted for the KD group compared with hospital controls.

There are a few things in there that are also symptoms of ASD's (and ADD - the "attention" part specifically).

Which begs a few questions...

Could my son not have Asperger's and instead his problems are due to his Kawasaki Disease?

Could my son have Asperger's because of his Kawasaki Disease?

Are the results of the study indicative of problems developed from the KD or are they, unknowingly, indicative of the percentage of kids with KD that end up being diagnosed with an ASD?

And so on...

So anyhow, in my ongoing quest to learn more about my son and his ASD and any possible relation to his KD, I thought I'd post here and see how many people here with an ASD also had Kawasaki.

Follow-up note to lovelyboy: From parents I've spoken with whose children had KD, many ended up with allergies as well. Just a thought since you mentioned allergies.

Have a great day everyone!
Diane

Question: has your son had an IQ test? I'm not asking because of interest in the overall score, but because of the scatter pattern most of us have been made aware of in our AS kids. Indicative of accelerated brain development in some areas, and underdeveloped connections in others.

Hi DW_a_mom!

He did have an IQ test. I managed to get the school to run a few different tests on him including an IQ test and a test that they had to special order to check for Executive Dysfunction.

It didn't reveal any accelerated areas per se but it does show underdevelopment in some areas (the other areas are average, I don't think he had any areas that were above a middle average).

But if it tested for things like his ability to keep track in his brain of things that greatly interest him such as everything there is to know about how all the Yu-Gi-Oh cards work and interact with each other (he has several thousands of cards, all in poor shape because they're all played with) and everything there is to know about his specific video game, and everything there is to know about 3-ring binders (his "odd" interest is office supplies, 3-ring binders especially) then his score would be off the charts.

But his math skills are elementary level (he's a senior this year graduating in 2012). He can't keep the various steps straight when trying to do a math problem that isn't a simple add, subtract, multiply, or divide math problem but he can tell you every step to take to make a particular Yu-Gi-Oh card play at its strongest. That sort of thing stymies me.

But anyhow, I do believe that he's definitely on the spectrum but more and more lately as I research more and remember back to when he was younger, I think if he'd been diagnosed when he was younger he would have been diagnosed as having Autism rather than Asperger's. He's made great strides in many areas.

Diane

Hi Diane.....I do think that it's interesting that you try to make a connection, but at the same time I do think that you need to keep in mind that even though different diagnosis might have plenty of symptoms in common, it's about the grouping of spesific symptoms together that in the end leads to a spesific diagnosis....Just thinking of AS, the grouping of high IQ, sensory disintegration and poor social skills, stands out for me....Don't think sensory integration problems really stands out in Kawasaki disease?

not to be insesitive but this sounds like a rare syndrome and very very grave like the asiatic flu and sars is it common with as?

Hi!

You're right that Kawasaki is definitely different than ASD's. I was just wondering how many with Asperger's had Kawasaki Disease. I don't think that everyone who has an ASD has Kawasaki Disease but I do wonder A) how many with an ASD did have Kawasaki and B) how many who had Kawasaki also developed an ASD.

Kind of like someone might ask how many people with epilepsy had febrile seizures when they were babies. Not everyone that had febrile seizures has epilepsy and not everyone who has epilepsy had febrile seizures, but I'm sure there is definitely a "cross" in there.

It's just my never-ending quest to "put things together", find new connections, etc.



Have a great night!
Diane

Hi!

I don't think you're being insensitive.

Kawasaki Disease is rather rare (although I don't know how rare it is now compared to when my son was diagnosed in 1995) and it can be grave.

Shortly after my son was out of the hospital and was on his aspirin regimen, I saw a news story about a little girl down at Loma Linda Hospital in California who was in need of a new heart because of Kawasaki. Her parents didn't speak English and if the doctors they were dealing with before their daughter went past the point of no return were anything like our doctors, then I really think their daughter got as sick as she did because they listened to the doctors instead of believing their gut instinct.

I don't fault the parents at all so please don't think that I do. I fault the medical professionals they were dealing with before their daughter ended up needing a new heart. I had to educate our medical professionals on procedures that had to be performed once he was treated. If I hadn't, it's entirely possible he would have been there with that little girl needing a heart himself.

I cried during that news story.

I don't know how common it is with AS, I was just looking to see how many with an ASD had/have Kawasaki and how many that have Kawasaki now have AS.

But I don't feel that you were insensitive at all.

Have an outstanding evening!
Diane

Hi-

My son did not have Kawasaki's disease. I believe John Travolta and his wife said that their son Jett had Kawasaki's disease when he was little and they attributed his autism to that.

Nope. But in the late 90's I worked in the next city over from Kawasaki.

Hi!

Thank you for your response and for letting me know about your son!

Yes when I heard that back when Jett died, it struck a chord with me because my son had KD and now Asperger's. And my son was practically Jett's doppelganger.

I didn't believe, and still don't believe, that KD causes ASD's but because of the similarities between their son and mine, and because of bits of research I've been reading (not a lot available yet) I figured I'd start looking into the prevalence of people with ASD's now who were stricken with KD when they were younger.

Thank you again!!
Diane

lol ... up until a couple years ago I had a Kawasaki Quad in the garage.

But... Kawasaki is actually the last name of a doctor that the disease was named after.

Hey, wonder if he rode Kawasaki?

Have a great night!!
Diane