Children and adolescents can also suffer from Post COVID syndrome

More than 187 million cases of people with the COVID-19 disease have already been recorded worldwide. Some of those people who experience infection without symptoms at severe pictures and recover also suffer from PostCovid syndrome or prolonged Covid, a set of symptoms that scientists in different countries are still studying to fully understand and treat in time. Until now, people over 18 were considered to be at higher risk of developing symptoms after acute infection, but cases of children and adolescents have already been reported in reviews in Europe and Australia. scientists, but in countries like Argentina there were also some cases.

“At the end of last year, we dealt with the case of a girl who had a moderate COVID-19 image. Three weeks after being discharged for the acute infection, the patient exhibited symptoms such as cough, shortness of breath, diarrhea and had to be hospitalized. An endoscopy was done which found a stomach problem and laryngeal problems. He received treatment and improved, ”he said. Infobae Enrique Casanueva, head of the pediatric infectology service at the Austral University Hospital in Pilar, Argentina.

“Coronavirus infection is a disease that we still do not know in all its subsequent manifestations. The scientific and medical community learns every day because it is a new disease that can leave sequelae. What you have to take into account is that not all people will have the same response during and after infection, ”said Dr Casanueva.

“It is important that families pay attention to the health of children and adolescents with COVID-19. Be monitored after COVID-19, especially if they play competitive sports. We must be attentive to the differential diagnoses to rule out whether it is PostCovid or another health problem, ”added Casanueva, member of the Argentinian Pediatric Society.

Post-Covid syndrome was first described in adults. But Now, several studies in Sweden, Italy, UK and Australia have reported a similar phenomenon in children, including symptoms such as headache, fatigue and palpitations, although they rarely suffer. severe initial symptoms of COVID-19.

Estimates of the frequency of long-term COVID in children vary widely. There are researchers who point out the need for more studies so that you can get a better picture of the impact of the coronavirus on children, especially for when measures of restrictions or releases are taken in cities or to take them into account in vaccination plans.

Pediatrician Danilo Buonsenso, from Gemelli University Hospital in Rome, led the first attempt to register long-term COVID in children. With his team, they interviewed 129 children aged 6 to 16 who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 between March and November 2020. In January, they reported in an article that more than a third had one or two symptoms. persistent four months. or more after infection, and another quarter had three or more symptoms.

As frequent symptoms, boys in Italy suffered from insomnia, fatigue, muscle aches and persistent catarrhal-like discomfort, a pattern similar to that seen in adults with prolonged COVID. Even children who had mild initial symptoms or who were asymptomatic were not spared from these lingering effects.

Data released by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) in February and updated in April also raised concerns. They showed that 9.8% of children aged 2 to 11 and 13% of children aged 12 to 16 reported at least one symptom that persisted five weeks after a positive diagnosis. Another report released in April found that a quarter of children interviewed after being released from hospital in Russia after COVID-19 showed symptoms more than five months later.

The reported numbers are not as high as those for adults. UK ONS data, for example, shows that around 25% of people aged 35 to 69 had symptoms at five weeks. But the numbers keep raising alarms because Severe COVID-19 in children is much rarer than in adults, and as a result, most children have been assumed to have been spared the effects of prolonged COVID, says Jakob Armann, a pediatrician at the University of technology from Dresden, Germany.

If 10% or 15% of children, regardless of the initial severity of the disease, show long-term symptoms, “that’s a real problem,” he says, “so we have to study it.” But Armann in dialogue with the magazine Nature expressed that the numbers may not be so high in childhood.

Symptoms of prolonged bird flu are fatigue, headaches, difficulty concentrating, and insomnia. Armann noted that other phenomena related to the pandemic, such as school closures and the trauma of seeing family members sick or dying from COVID-19, could also cause these symptoms and artificially inflate COVID estimates. extended. “You need a control group to determine what is really related to the infection,” he said.

Dr Armann and his colleagues have taken blood samples from high school students in Dresden, Germany since May 2020 to track infection rates. In March and April of this year, more than 1,500 children – nearly 200 of whom had antibodies indicating a previous coronavirus infection – were surveyed to see how many said they had had COVID for a long time.

In May, they published the results of this work: they found no difference in the rates of symptoms reported by the two groups. Prolonged COVID in children is likely lower than other studies indicate, Armann says. This does not mean that COVID or prolonged PostCovid does not exist in children, he admitted, but it does mean that the figure is probably less than 10%, a level which would have been detected in the study. The real number may be as low as 1%.

Pia Hardelid, an epidemiologist at University College London, used data collected by the Virus Watch study, which tracks infections and symptoms in more than 23,000 households in England and Wales. As noted in an article reviewed in June, She and her colleagues found that 4.6% of children with signs of coronavirus infection had symptoms that persisted for more than four weeks.

Another British study, published as prepress in May, found a similar rate. Of the more than 1,700 schoolchildren who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, 4.4% had persistent symptoms, such as headaches, fatigue and loss of smell; 1.6% had symptoms that lasted at least eight weeks.

Beyond the differences in incidence of the problem, Even experts point out that one of the challenges today is figuring out how many children develop prolonged COVID because there are no established diagnostic criteria in adults, let alone in children. Investigations to detect symptoms are often very comprehensive and not yet specific enough to distinguish long-term COVID from other illnesses.. One suggestion, following a review of the adult literature by the UK’s National Institute for Health Research, is that prolonged COVID could be a set of four different syndromes, including post-intensive care syndrome, the syndrome postviral fatigue and prolonged COVID syndrome. This could also be the case in children, according to Dr Hardelid.

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