AN unusual number of hepatitis cases have been detected in young children across Scotland's central belt.
Public Health Scotland issued a warning after 11 cases of liver inflammation were identified in a short period of time.
All of the 11 cases were among children between one and five years old who have required hospital treatment with most of them presenting symptoms from March.
Four Scottish health boards have seen cases so far, including NHS Lanarkshire, Tayside, Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Fife.
READ MORE: Kinder Surprise eggs linked to Europe-wide Salmonella outbreak
Each year around seven to eight cases of non A to E hepatitis are found in children in Scotland who have no other underlying diagnoses.
The national public health body warned that the circumstances of the cases are "unusual and requires further investigation" due to the severity of illness, the geographical spread and the short time span over which they occurred.
There is no clear connection between the cases as of yet and there is no clear cause.
Director of public health for the body Dr Nicholas Phin said: "If you have a child who is showing signs of jaundice, where the skin has a yellow tinge and is most easily seen in the whites of the eyes, then parents should contact their GP or other Health Care professional.
"We are continuing to investigate these cases and will provide further updates as and when they are available.”
Public Health Scotland is working with other agencies across the UK to investigate the cases.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here