subjects
A total of 43 patients with newly onset KD were recruited sequentially
at the inpatient clinic of Department of Pediatrics, the Second People’s
Hospital of Changzhou, Affiliate Hospital of NanJing medical University,
China. Another 20 age-, gender-and ethnicity-matched healthy controls
(HCs) were recruited during the same period, and they had no a history
of any chronic inflammatory disease. Individual patients with KD were
diagnosed, according to the international criteria of the 2004 American
Heart Association (AHA) statement [1]. The severity of coronary
artery dilation in those patients were assessed using the Z-score
(normalized luminal dimensions for body surface area), and a
Z-score>2 was defined as a coronary artery abnormality
(CAL+) [17]. 17 of among the KD patients were diagnosed with
coronary artery lesions by echocardiography. Patients with any of other
autoimmune diseases, recent infection or those who had received immune
suppressive therapies or glucocorticoid therapies were excluded from the
study. All patients underwent the same treatment options, which were the
administration of IVIG at a dose of 2 g/kg for 1 day and oral aspirin at
a dose of 30-50 mg/kg per day from the establishment of diagnosis to
defervescence. After IVIG administration, all patients were in
remission, at which stage the patients had been afebrile for at least 48
h. All subjects signed an informed consent form prior to the initiation
of the study, and the study was approved by the Ethical Committee of the
Second People’s Hospital of Changzhou.