University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston: Substantial Proportion Of Ethnically Diverse Children From Low-Resource Backgrounds Report Long-Term COVID-19 Complications
A substantial proportion of ethnically diverse children from low-resource backgrounds with severe COVID-19 illness are reporting long-term complications from the virus, according to research from UTHealth Houston.
The study, published Monday in the
Most pediatric COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic; however, a small number of children are diagnosed with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) - a rare but severe condition that is associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Persistent symptoms of COVID-19 illness in children diagnosed with and without MIS-C is largely unknown.
"Over 27% of patients diagnosed with MIS-C and 15% of patients not diagnosed with MIS-C reported symptoms lasting more than four months," said
Researchers, many of whom were
Key findings included:
* Children who were not diagnosed with MIS-C (54.49% Hispanic, 19.23% non-Hispanic Black, 79.49% on government insurance) were younger than children who were diagnosed with MIS-C (mean age 6.43 years versus 9.08 years).
* Approximately 11.5% of children with MIS-C and 37.8% without MIS-C reported acute long COVID, while 26.9% and 15.3% reported chronic long COVID, respectively.
* Female children were almost twice as likely to report long COVID symptoms versus male children.
"Our research also highlighted the disparities of age, sex, and race/ethnicity in terms of risk for long COVID symptoms," said
Meanwhile, an abstract highlighting the effects of long COVID on physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness on children and teens is being presented Tuesday as a late breaker at the CHEST Annual Meeting, hosted by the
A second analysis of the same group of patients showed that nearly one-third of patients who participated in any athletic or physical activity in or outside of school reported a negative impact on physical or athletic performance, and 66.7% reported it was directly related to COVID-19 illness.
Specific complaints when returning to physical activity post COVID illness included tiredness (36.8%) and shortness of breath (10.5%). The odds of a decline in physical activity performance was over twice that among children with long COVID versus those without long COVID.
"In clinic, we see that a lot of these children are unable to play sports, and that's such a big change in their lives," Bozkanat said. "Our study supports these observations. The children with persistent symptoms need to be monitored long-term, ideally in a multidisciplinary clinic."
Overall, the most prevalent symptoms of long COVID included tiredness (6.7%), shortness of breath (5.8%), cough (5.1%), headache (4.5%), difficulty concentrating (4.5%), disrupted sleep (4.5%), other symptoms (3.8%), anxiety (3.5%), body aches (3.5%), joint pain (3.2%), chest pain (2.9%), intermittent fever (1.9%), and loss of taste or smell (1.6%).
Abstract co-authors from
In addition to Messiah, Xie, Mathew, Shaikh, Veeraswamy, Rabl, Francis, Lozano, He, Weerakoon, Srikanth, and Khan, co-authors on the
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Original text here: https://www.uth.edu/news/story/substantial-proportion-of-ethnically-diverse-children-from-lowresource-backgrounds-report-longterm-covid19-complications
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