Comparison of Persistent Symptoms After COVID-19 and Other Non-SARS-CoV-2 Infections in Children, 2021, Roge et al

Introduction: The data on long COVID in children is scarce since children and adolescents are typically less severely affected by acute COVID-19. This study aimed to identify the long-term consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children, and to compare the persistent symptom spectrum between COVID-19 and community-acquired infections of other etiologies.

Methods: This was an ambidirectional cohort study conducted at the Children's Clinical University Hospital in Latvia. The study population of pediatric COVID-19 patients and children with other non-SARS-CoV-2-community-acquired infections were invited to participate between July 1, 2020, and April 30, 2021.

Results: In total, 236 pediatric COVID-19 patients were enrolled in the study. Additionally, 142 comparison group patients were also enrolled. Median follow-up time from acute symptom onset was 73.5 days (IQR; 43–110 days) in the COVID-19 patient group and 69 days (IQR, 58–84 days) in the comparison group. Most pediatric COVID-19 survivors (70%, N = 152) reported at least one persistent symptom, but more than half of the patients (53%, N = 117) noted two or more long-lasting symptoms. The most commonly reported complaints among COVID-19 patients included persistent fatigue (25.2%), cognitive sequelae, such as irritability (24.3%), and mood changes (23.3%), as well as headaches (16.9%), rhinorrhea (16.1%), coughing (14.4%), and anosmia/dysgeusia (12.3%). In addition, 105 (44.5%) COVID patients had persistent symptoms after the 12-week cut-off point, with irritability (27.6%, N = 29), mood changes (26.7%, N = 28), and fatigue (19.2%, N = 20) being the most commonly reported ones. Differences in symptom spectrum among the various age groups were seen. Logistic regression analysis showed that long-term persistent symptoms as fever, fatigue, rhinorrhea, loss of taste and/or smell, headaches, cognitive sequelae, and nocturnal sweating were significantly associated with the COVID-19 experience when compared with the controls.

Conclusions: We found that at the time of interview almost three-quarters of children reported at least one persistent symptom, but the majority of patients (53%) had two or more concurrent symptoms. The comparison group's inclusion in the study allowed us to identify that symptom persistence is more apparent with COVID-19 than any other non-SARS-CoV-2 infection. More research is needed to distinguish the symptoms of long COVID from pandemic-associated complaints. Each persistent symptom is important in terms of child well-being during COVID-19 recovery.

Open access, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fped.2021.752385/full

 

This paper refers to mood swings and irritability as cognitive sequelae.
It also feels as though it gives little attention to impaired memory and impaired attention and concentration problems. They acknowledge using an unvalidated questionnaire and had no objective parameters at evaluation.

 

Interesting study.

They looked at persistent symptoms in children that got COVID-19 and compared it to children who got another infection.

The most common of these other infections were the common cold (38.1%), pharyngotonsillitis (21.8%), gastrointestinal infections (19.7%), urinary tract infections (8.5%), pneumonia (3.5%) and bacterial infections of unknown origin (3.5%).

They followed up patients for approximately 2-3 months.

Logistic regression showed clear differences for symptoms such as fatigue, headache, difficulties to concentrate, and loss of smell. With point estimates for odds ratios of 8 or higher.

Caveat: the children with non-COVID-19 infections were significantly younger, although the authors tried to account for that in the logistic regression.