Covid-19, acute lymphoblastic leukemia and down syndrome: A case report of a hero

AIMS & OBJECTIVES: To report a case of relapsed Precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) of a child with Down syndrome (DS) and COVID-19 and outline the treatment regimen that we used METHODS: A six-year-and-six-months-old boy with combined relapse (central nervous system (CNS) and bone marrow) ALL and DS was administered to our department after his mother's second smear tested positive for COVID-19 while he was receiving his relapse treatment within ALL-REZ-BFM-2002 protocol RESULTS: Promising results of the efficacy of the IL-6 inhibitor tocilizumab in the treatment of COVID-19 CONCLUSIONS: Through the relentless efforts of research and clinical trials, promising results and a clearer image of the disease started to unravel, although continuous efforts are still needed and more clinical trials are required to attest to the efficacy of the management regime and the disease pattern of COVID-19 that we know today ALL children with COVID-19 tend to have a good prognosis and a mild form of the disease, although children with underlying health conditions might be presented with severe forms of the disease CT in children should be performed in suspected cases since many pediatric cases have severe abnormalities in their CT scans while their clinical conditions do not represent the underlying pathology of their chest and bilateral ground-glass opacities are not likely to happen in children We recommend the use of tocilizumab in severe cases of COVID-19 in children, especially for children in the high-risk group