New Delhi: One in seven children who get Covid-19 could continue to have related symptoms 15 weeks later, an analysis of responses from over 6,000 subjects aged between 11-17 years in the UK has found.
The Children and Young People with Long Covid (CLoCk) study found headache and fatigue to be the most common symptoms.
The study compared, over a period of time, symptomatic children who had tested positive with those who tested negative after reporting symptoms. Those that had tested positive for Covid using RT-PCR had more symptoms at the three-month period than those that tested negative.
In their pre-print study published on the site Research Square, researchers from UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health wrote: “Three months after the SARS-CoV-2 test, the presence of physical symptoms was higher than at baseline in both groups; 66.5 per cent of test-positives and 53.4 per cent of test-negatives had any symptoms whilst 30.3 per cent of test-positives and 16.2 per cent of test-negatives had 3+ symptoms.
“The symptom profile did not vary by age: for both 11-15y and 16-17y, the most common symptoms among test-positives were tiredness, headache and shortness of breath and, among test-negatives, tiredness, headache and the unspecified category of ‘other’. Again, the prevalence of tiredness and headache was consistently higher in the test positives, 39.0 per cent and 23.2 per cent versus 24.4 per cent and 14.2 per cent in negatives, respectively.”
The study is important for the Indian context, given that states are taking baby steps towards opening schools with precautions.
Also read: Fatigue, hair loss, depression — study on long Covid shows what Wuhan patients suffer a year on
Figures lower than earlier studies
The figures reported in this study are lower than those in some earlier studies, which had said more than half the children who get Covid suffer from long-term afflictions.
Using the Public Health England (PHE) database, the researchers sent questionnaires to 22,000 young people and received 17,000 responses. The present analysis looked at 3,065 people who tested positive and 3,739 who tested negative.
The authors wrote in the discussion: “Taking the studies together, there is consistent evidence that some teenagers will have persisting symptoms after testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 and that mental and physical health symptoms are closely related. Avoiding false dichotomies between mind and body is likely to be helpful as, for example, stressed individuals may present with somatic symptoms or conversely persisting physical symptoms may be associated with depression and anxiety.
“Some individuals may develop somatic symptom disorders and the existing evidence for effective management of conditions such as pain, headache and fatigue might be usefully evaluated in CYP (children and young people) presenting with persistent physical symptoms post-COVID.”
One of the problems the researchers faced was the low rate of response. They also pointed out that false negatives and false positives in RT-PCR test results could introduce a bias in the findings. But they warned against extrapolating findings of adult ‘long Covid’ studies for children, as the two age groups have a very different post-disease profile.
(Edited by Manasa Mohan)
Also read: What is ‘Long Covid’ and why some patients who have recovered continue to feel ill for months