Post-acute covid syndrome in children and adolescents is considerable and can’t be dismissed, experts say.
Children and teens are 30% more likely to have health issues in the months to years after a covid infection, compared to their uninfected peers, according to a large-scale German study.
While the risks were still lower than for adults, the authors said these findings show post-covid syndrome can’t be dismissed in children and adolescents.
“We found that covid-19 diagnosis was associated with higher long-term demand for healthcare services as reflected in outpatient and inpatient diagnoses of a broad set of outcomes more than three months after confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection,” they wrote in PLOS Medicine.
The researchers undertook a retrospective matched cohort analysis of German health data from around 12,000 children and adolescents and 145,000 adults, collected between January 2019 to December 2020.
Participants were followed up for around 250 days, to record incident morbidity outcomes occurring at least three months after initial covid diagnosis.
Among the individuals with PCR-confirmed covid, a significantly higher proportion experienced new onset physical and psychological morbidities at least three months after initial diagnosis compared with age- and sex-matched controls.
Overall, children and adolescents with previous covid infection were 30% more likely to report another health condition during the follow-up period compared to controls, with this figure rising to 33% for adults.
The study, which covered almost half (46%) of the German population, found the most common long-term health sequelae in children and adolescents were malaise/fatigue/exhaustion, cough and throat and chest pain. Headache, fever, anxiety disorder, abdominal pain and depression were also elevated.
The increased risks were similar among children and teens.
In adults, disturbances of smell and taste, fever and respiratory symptoms such as dyspnea and cough exhibited the strongest increase, while rates of throat and chest pain, hair loss, malaise/fatigue/exhaustion and headache also rose.
For both children/adolescents and adults, severity of the documented health outcomes was greater for previous covid patients, with higher incidence of hospital visits and intensive care for individuals with outpatient diagnoses compared to non-covid controls.
The covid cohort was slightly more likely to go to hospital and visit doctors in the year after their infection.
“Our study extends existing evidence on post-covid-19 syndrome among children and adolescents,” the authors wrote.
“While children and adolescents appear to be less affected than adults, these findings are statistically significant for all age groups.”
