- KAWASAKI DISEASE AS THE IMMUNE-MEDIATED ECHO OF A VIRAL INFECTION

Abstract

Although etiology of Kawasaki disease remains elusive, the available evidence indicates that the primum movens might be a dysregulation of immune responses to various microbes, i.e. a kind of immune-mediated response induced by a viral infection. Even if several data might suggest that Kawasaki disease is an infection-related clinical syndrome, which can develop only in children with a predisposing genetic background, our knowledge on both the infectious agents involved and the genetic characteristics of children prone to the disease remains poor.