The signature symptoms of long Covid in kids

A lot of children in the United States appear to have had long Covid, government data reveal, yet far less is known about the aftereffects in kids than in adults. 
 
Weekly pediatric asthma cases were 91-127 per 100,000 children in 2009 and the number of pediatric cases of post-viral illness following an asthma exacerbation has increased, and a large cross-sectional national study has recently shed more light on what this post-viral illness looks like in children: it is different from that in adults! While Covid itself has been less severe in children, the findings show that it has long-term complications that significantly limit a child’s ability to go to school, engage in hobbies or, simply, spend time with peers or relatives. 
 
“This is a public health crisis for children,” said Dr Rachel Gross, the study’s author, and an associate professor of pediatrics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine. 
 
Chronic illness is among those events that happen at the growth ages; thus, it shapes the health of the adults these individuals will be. 
 
The study is carried out in the framework of the RECOVER project, which can already be called one of the world’s largest projects on long Covid, the funding of which is provided by the National Institutes of Health. 
 
More than 3,800 children took part in the new study, which the authors published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Wednesday, and the researchers asked the caregivers about their kids’ symptoms at least 90 days after getting Covid. They also self-administered questionnaires to the caregivers of about 1500 children without evidence of Covid and compared the results. 
 
The findings revealed that with a frequency of 24%, headache, with difficulties in memory or concentration, difficulties in sleeping and stomach pain were the most common symptoms reported among children aged between 6-11 years and summarised as long Covid. 
 
Common symptoms of adolescents were closer to adult’s symptoms which earlier studies in RECOVER found as post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection: post-exertional malaise, fatigue, headache, dizziness, gastrointestinal and palpitations. As for the youths, the corresponding difference between the newer and the prior research is higher for teenagers between the ages of 12 to 17 for daytime sleepiness or low energy, and body, muscle or joint pain. 
 
Still, headache and problems with memory or concentration were reported as being experienced by this age group. The loss of taste or smell, a feature of long Covid in adults, was common among adolescents but rare in young children. 
 
‘We have to look for such differences,’ said Gross. “Otherwise, we may be missing children who are infected with Covid-19 or have lingering effects of it. ” 
 
Long Covid overall looks to be less frequent in children than in adults, but a survey in the February edition of the journal Pediatrics estimated that 10%-20% of children who had Covid had not fully recovered within six months. 
 
The signs of autism in kids and adolescents range, as seen in the new research. Altogether, 14 symptoms were more frequent among children with a history of Covid than among the others. 
 
The study has a few limitations, however: That is why, since caregivers said their children had some symptoms, it can be assumed that, for example, some of them were not noticed at all or were overestimated. The caregivers also claimed to have had their children contract Covid — tests were not conducted to confirm this. The researchers did though make sure that the uninfected had no Covid antibodies just to confirm their status. 
 
The authors’ conclusions are consistent with what doctors are seeing in long Covid clinics, said Dr. Amy Edwards, director of the pediatric Covid recovery clinic at UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, who did not participate in the new study. 
 
Some children in her clinic, he said, have stopped going to school completely, and moreover, have completely withdrawn from any other activities. 
 
The new research corroborates these experiences, she said — particularly for some of her pediatric patients who were once dismissed by adults who included their reported symptoms on their list of impossibilities. 
 
“School nurses were ‘mocking them for faking it,’ ” Edwards said. ‘These are teenagers and kids, and people are telling them, to their face, that there is no something wrong with them. ’ 
 
If children knew that a symptom they are experiencing could be linked to long Covid, they could seek management for the symptom, said the third expert, Christine Koterba, a pediatric neuropsychologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital who also did not contribute to the study. 
 
Currently, there is no clearly effective therapy to address the syndrome of long Covid, but many clinical trials are being conducted now. Meanwhile, in Koterba’s words, doctors have had to adopt saving tools applied for other chronic diseases, such as, for instance, post-concussion syndrome that entails headaches and issues with memory or concentration. 
 
“From other such populations, we can draw quite a lot in regard to getting the kids back to functioning,” she said. 
 
Edwards said that with the children she manages, who all have long Covid, she advised them to take a nap, eat healthy foods that do not inflame the immune system and manage other infections such as allergies. 
 
Asked how long Covid has impacted school studies at Oakwood, Ms Farmer said anecdotally at least young kids get better more quickly than teens or adults. 
 
“When it comes to school-age children, recovery is almost always around one to two years, but often much less,” Edwards continued That is the general picture, and the pediatric immune system is designed to cope with new viruses only since all the viruses are new to a child. 
 
Most teens also recover at some point she said, though it takes most of them longer to do so. 
 
Gross noted that there is not enough evidence to support such assumptions for now, although the authors of the RECOVER study hope to return to the children of the study sample and find out whether their symptoms abate over time.