Long COVID—six months of prospective follow-up of changes in symptom profiles of non-hospitalised children and young people.. 2023 Stephenson et al

Full title: Long COVID—six months of prospective follow-up of changes in symptom profiles of non-hospitalised children and young people after SARS-CoV-2 testing: A national matched cohort study (The CLoCk) study

Authors also include Trudie Chalder.

Abstract

Background
Little is known about the prevalence and natural trajectory of post-COVID symptoms in young people, despite very high numbers of young people having acute COVID. To date, there has been no prospective follow-up to establish the pattern of symptoms over a 6-month time period.

Methods
A non-hospitalised, national sample of 3,395 (1,737 SARS-COV-2 Negative;1,658 SARS-COV-2 Positive at baseline) children and young people (CYP) aged 11–17 completed questionnaires 3 and 6 months after PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between January and March 2021 and were compared with age, sex and geographically-matched test-negative CYP.

Results
Three months after a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test, 11 of the 21 most common symptoms reported by >10% of CYP had reduced. There was a further decline at 6 months. By 3 and 6 months the prevalence of chills, fever, myalgia, cough and sore throat of CYP who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 reduced from 10–25% at testing to <3%. The prevalence of loss of smell declined from 21% to 5% at 3 months and 4% at 6 months. Prevalence of shortness of breath and tiredness also declined, but at a lower rate. Among test-negatives, the same common symptoms and trends were observed at lower prevalence’s. Importantly, in some instances (shortness of breath, tiredness) the overall prevalence of specific individual symptoms at 3 and 6 months was higher than at PCR-testing because these symptoms were reported in new cohorts of CYP who had not reported the specific individual symptom previously.

Conclusions
In CYP, the prevalence of specific symptoms reported at time of PCR-testing declined with time. Similar patterns were observed among test-positives and test-negatives and new symptoms were reported six months post-test for both groups suggesting that symptoms are unlikely to exclusively be a specific consequence of SARS-COV-2 infection. Many CYP experienced unwanted symptoms that warrant investigation and potential intervention.

Open access, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0277704

 

Not especially compelling or rigorous. Even the first Body Politic study was better than this, let alone the second one. I don't know what a "wanted" symptom is. I don't think that's a thing. I don't know why they mention a thing that isn't a thing.

The conclusion is odd. It seems to consider that only a high population level of illness matters. I guess because it won't bother healthcare services. Actually, both conclusions are weird. And different. There is an abstract conclusion, and a section at the end of the paper that goes:

In conclusion, while acknowledging that (re)infections may have gone undetected, our study demonstrates why new symptoms arising 6-months post-infection should not be exclusively viewed as new long COVID symptoms and should be seen within the wider context of symptomology in the general population​

So for the kids who are ill, I guess they just have to consider the wider context of the general population? Not trying very hard. Or any hard. The need to minimize is pretty obvious, this is a political paper. And 6 months? It's been 3 years.

This study does not bring useful information, all it clearly aims is to ignore the whole issue. They use the CFQ for "tiredness", so entirely useless. Oddly enough, zero mention of anything psychosocial, the only hit for it is the CFQ. But the quality level of this paper is definitely what's expected of Chalder.

 

Basically they are saying maybe they would have had symptoms anyway? Is this the best they can come up with? Weak stuff. Didn't really need a paper.