What impact can this research have on human life?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous people were infected and died worldwide. Therefore, this study plays a pivotal role in human life in terms of rapid diagnosis and management of the COVID-19 infection, especially in the high-risk population such as children with infectious diseases. Additionally, our results revealed significant recommendations to general people and physicians to monitor these types of children presented with COVID-19 disease.

How exactly is the research subject connected to these issues?

In this study, after a systematic review of all COVID-19 papers (1548 studies), we found that many children presented with Kawasaki disease or multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS) under the age of 18 with positive COVID-19 tests. Therefore, we investigated all of these children and evaluated all associated risk factors with COVID-19 infection.  

How can students get involved in this field, and why should they do so?

At first, I plan to create a multidisciplinary research team of all motivated students to get involved in research at the University of Georgia. Second, as the SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 disease is one of the newly challenging diseases globally recognized from December 2019, I recommend to all students to get involved in future studies associated with this field in our research team at The University of Georgia and can publish high-ranking papers in high-quality journals in the near future.

What were the main challenges and skills involved in conducting this research?

From my perspective, the main challenge of each research is the novelty and creativity of the topic. In this study, we systematically review all related papers and read about 1548 studies to find the children with specific characteristics according to the study's eligibility criteria. Additionally, we assessed the quality and risk of bias of all included studies using the modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Moreover, a comprehensive search strategy of all databases was used to write this systematic review.   

What made you interested in conducting research on this subject?

When we saw the high mortality rate of children who had infectious diseases accompanied by the COVID-19 disease worldwide, we started the initial search and had several online conferences to confirm the topic and infrastructure of the study. Then, we found the possible association between most of the included studies in this topic and started this study.

Could you tell us about your collaborators?

I worked with multiple research teams and centers in the United States, Iran, and Georgia. In addition, I have created a specific research team to perform high-quality teamwork research on clinical and basic science hot topics.