Health
What Long Covid Symptoms Are Most Common in Children and Teens?
Photo: Joerg Carstensen/dpa (Photo by Jörg Carstensen/picture Alliance via Getty Images)
The most common long-term Covid symptoms in adolescents are loss of smell or taste, fatigue and pain, according to a new study. While in children, the most persistent long-term Covid symptoms are gastrointestinal problems, pain and neurocognitive problems, such as difficulty concentrating on tasks and sleep problems.
“Many pediatric and adolescent patients with long COVID have these symptoms, and they are really suffering,” said senior author Melissa Stockwell, a professor at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Mailman School of Public Health, in a press release. “Knowing what symptoms are likely to indicate that a child or teen is dealing with long COVID will hopefully help us explore how we can help patients recover.”
About 65 million people worldwide are living with long Covid-19, a debilitating condition characterized by a wide range of symptoms that last longer than three months after recovery from a Covid-19 infection. Since 2020, most research into long Covid has focused mainly on adults. The few studies that have attempted to analyze long Covid-19 in children so far have focused on individual symptoms or on adolescents. This could lead to doctors overlooking long-term Covid symptoms in children and adolescents or misdiagnosing the condition.
“Using the indices as a basis for future research will hopefully help us understand long COVID in children and adolescents, and ultimately develop a robust diagnostic tool to better identify children and adolescents with the condition,” Stockwell added in a press release. The research was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
To investigate how long Covid manifests in both children and adolescents, Stockwell and his team recruited 751 children who tested positive for Covid-19 and a further 147 uninfected school-age children. There were 3109 infected and 1369 uninfected teenagers in the adolescent group.
Overall, 45% of infected (338/751) and 33% of uninfected (48/147) reported school-age children and 39% of infected (1219/3109) and 27% of uninfected (372/ 1369) adolescents at least one long-term symptom,” the researchers found.
They found that adolescents with long Covid-19, like adults, mainly experience loss of smell or taste, but school-aged children did not experience that long Covid symptom.
Although most people assume that children are not vulnerable to Covid-19 infections and subsequent long Covid symptoms, a 2024 study found that approximately six million children in the United States are living with long Covid-19.
The chance that children will have a long Covid-19 period increases after a serious Covid-19 infection. Brain fog, known as one of the most disabling symptoms, affects according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
A 2023 study published in the journal Clinical and experimental pediatrics reported that a long Covid-19 period in children is associated with a higher prevalence of mental health problems than in adults.
“Long Covid-19 is a substantial health problem that affects a large proportion of children. It can result from various mechanisms, such as immune responses, tissue damage and persistent viral reservoirs. A good clinical evaluation is crucial for tailoring the treatment (for each patient). Treatment of affected children should include symptom management and psychological support. Although the prognosis of these cases is generally good, monitoring the long-term outlook is necessary as this disease is still new during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the authors conclude.
