Children infected with a mild case of COVID-19 can still develop long COVID symptoms

虽然研究表明beplay苹果手机能用吗，在COVID-19住院的儿童和成年人更容易患上长期的互联症状，但Uthealth Houston的研究人员的一项新研究发现，感染了Covid-19的儿童，但未住院，但仍然经历了长期的covid症状直至过去三个月感染。

The study waspublishedinThe Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal。

Researchers examined data from volunteers across the state of Texas between the ages of 5 and 18 who were enrolled in the Texas CARES survey, which began in October of 2020 with the goal of assessing COVID-19 antibody status over time among a population of adults and children in Texas.

Data for this study was collected before and after the vaccine rollout and during the waves of the Delta and Omicron variants.

“We were interested in understanding if children impacted with an acute or severe infection of COVID-19 would go on to have persisting symptoms, or what we call long COVID,” saidSarah Messiah，博士学位，MPH，研究的第一作者，以及流行病学，人类遗传学和环境科学教授，以及UTHELADE公共卫生学院儿科人口健康中心主任。“这项特殊的研究是独一无二的，是第一项基于人群的文献研究，以报道尚未在Covid-19的儿童中长期相互兴趣的流行率。”

A total of 82 pediatric volunteers (4.8% of the total 1,813) reported having long COVID symptoms – 1.5% showed symptoms that lasted between four and 12 weeks, including loss of taste and smell, fatigue, and cough. An additional 3.3% reported that symptoms such as loss of taste and smell, cough, and difficulty breathing persisted for longer than 12 weeks.

“From this information we wanted to know, ‘What would put a child more at risk for long COVID and who is more susceptible to this?’ When we looked at risk factors of those who reported symptoms past 12 weeks, we found that children who were unvaccinated and who had obesity had a higher chance of developing long COVID. These findings are consistent with other literature that found children and adults who have comorbid health conditions and are unvaccinated are at a higher risk of being hospitalized for the virus,” Messiah said.

Additionally, researchers found that children infected with COVID-19 before the emergence of the Delta variant were more at risk of developing long COVID. “If you had COVID-19 earlier in the pandemic, you were more at risk for longer symptoms. With Delta and Omicron, we did see a lot of children who ended up hospitalized, but their symptoms were less severe, and our results show they were also less likely to report persistent symptoms too,” Messiah said.

弥赛亚说，得克萨斯州照顾研究的结果很重要，因为它突出了非医院的青年的存在，他们在感染后也可能会出现持续的长期互联症状。

“There may be a perception that one needs to be hospitalized to have long COVID, and that is not what we found. I encourage parents to still take caution and get their child vaccinated against COVID-19, because we now know that it will decrease the risk of infection and long COVID,” she said.

The Texas CARES study is ongoing. To learn more about how to get involved visithttps://sph.uth.edu/projects/texascares/。

Additional UTHealth Houston authors included Eric Boerwinkle, PhD; Stacia M. DeSantis, PhD; Michael D. Swartz, PhD; Tianyao Hao, MS; Yashar Talebi, MS; Harold W. Kohl, III, PhD; Shiming Zhang, MS; Melissa Valerio-Shewmaker, PhD; Ashraf Yaseen, PhD; Steven H. Kelder, PhD; Jessica Ross, BS; Michael O. Gonzalez, MPH; Lequing Wu, MS; Lindsay N. Padilla, MPH; and Kourtney R. Lopez, BS. Other authors included Jennifer A. Shuford, MD, MPH, and Stephen J. Pont, MD, MPH, with the Texas Department of State Health Services; and David Lakey, MD, with The University of Texas System.

The study was funded and supported by the Texas Department of State Health Services (HHS000866600001).

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