Regular exercise should be a part of a child's daily routine

INTERVIEW \ DR SHELBY KUTTY, endowed professor, Johns Hopkins University

- POOJA BIRAIA JAISWAL

Dr Shelby Kutty is an endowed professor at Johns Hopkins University. He directs the Taussig Heart Center and chairs the Cardiovascular Analytic Intelligence Initiative at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Kutty has a Master’s degree in health care management from Harvard University, and is trained in medical artificial intelligence from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With so much expertise, Kutty is a name to reckon with in paediatric cardiology. He leads a team at Johns Hopkins that has developed various clinical programmes in cardiac care and was awarded major grants from the National Institutes of Health to lead data science approaches to manage Covid-19. Kutty, a prolific author who has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles in leading medical journals, says cardiac complications from Covid-19 are rare in children. Excerpts from an interview:

We have been facing high levels of pollution in cities. What is its impact on children? 

Air pollution is linked to many adverse health effects in children, affecting a multitude of systems. From a cardiac standpoint, chronic exposure to auto emissions and poor air quality as a child is linked to heart attacks, strokes, and atherosclerotic disease in early adulthood. There are many theories as to the potential cause, with some studies suggesting that increased inflammation from chronic exposure to pollution leads to changes in how we process cholesterol and fat, and it makes our vessels more susceptible to injury. Even among healthy adolescents, there are reports of sudden cardiac arrest and arrhythmias in individuals exposed to poor air quality conditions; many of the affected individuals were healthy, with no pre-existing conditions.