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Objective: To estimate incidence of Kawasaki disease (KD) over time among children in the city of Chandigarh, North India., Patients and Methods: We analysed records of all children with KD below 15 years of age at the Pediatric Allergy Immunology Unit, Advanced Pediatrics Centre, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, from January 1994 to December 2008. Diagnosis and treatment of KD were based on American Heart Association criteria. Among these cases, children residing in Chandigarh were identified. Yearly incidence was calculated and compared from 1994 to 2008., Results: During this period, 196 children were diagnosed as KD. Of these, 80 (40.8%; 48 boys, 32 girls) resided in Chandigarh. Four among these had coronary artery abnormalities (CAA) on echocardiography, while two had mitral regurgitation. Comparison of yearly data revealed increasing incidence of disease from 0.51 cases in 1994 to 4.54 cases per 100,000 children below 15 years of age in 2007. Majority (93.7%) of cases occurred in children ≤10 years of age with the highest incidence reported in the seventh year of life. Monthly distribution of disease showed two peaks with a maximum number of cases presenting in October followed by a second peak in May with a nadir in the month of February., Conclusion: Increasing incidence of KD in Chandigarh could be due to increasing clinical recognition as a result of greater awareness among paediatricians in the city, or may represent an actual increase in numbers. Striking differences from KD series reported from other countries include the older median age of our patients, low rate of CAA and a different bimodal seasonality, which may be epidemiologic clues to the nature of this vasculitis.

Reports of Kawasaki disease (KD) throughout India are increasing. This article addresses the question of whether the increased diagnosis of KD in India represents the emerging recognition of an illness that had been previously obscured by misdiagnosis, or whether KD is new to India and is increasing in incidence.Whichever answer turns out to be correct, the burden of KD is likely to pose a significant challenge to the health-care system in India in the coming years, due to the high cost of treatment and the potential for lifelong cardiovascular sequelae.Moreover, elucidating the factors that have contributed to the increased recognition of KD in India may provide useful insights for the continuing search for the etiology of KD worldwide.

Kawasaki syndrome (KS) is the most common cause of acquired pediatric heart disease in the developed world. There have been 2 distinctive patterns for the emergence of KS that are likely related to several factors including exposure to the causative agent(s) and host genetics. In Europe and North America where we presume the genetic susceptibility seems to be low, KS has existed in the pediatric population for more than a century and is associated with relatively low incidence. In Japan where genetic susceptibility is presumed to be high, KS seems not to have existed before the early 1950s. This relatively recent exposure has resulted in 3 nationwide epidemics and a high current endemic rate of 200 per 100,000 in children less than 5 years. If our history of alternative patterns of the emergence of KS is valid, it may prove useful as a predictive tool for countries including India, where clusters of KS cases have been recently reported. This article examines the historical evidence in support of a 2-tiered emergence of KS in Euro-America and Japan and then returns briefly to discuss its implications for the pediatric populations of India and the health care delivery systems in the developing world.