According to UTHealth, Houston, a drastic number of ethnically diverse children from low-resource backgrounds are reporting long-term covid complications after severe COVID-19 illnesses.
The study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, says that pediatric patients with private health insurance were less likely to report long COVID-19 symptoms by 66%. This comparison was done with those kids who had government insurance.
Although most COVID-19 cases in children are asymptomatic, some children are diagnosed with the multisystem inflammatory syndrome. However, it is a rare but severe condition associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Moreover, there are no known persistent COVID-19 symptoms in children diagnosed with or without MISC.
Sarah Messiah, PhD, MPH, and first author of the study said,
Over 27% of patients diagnosed with MIS-C and 15% of patients not diagnosed with MIS-C reported symptoms lasting more than four months,
She further added,
These findings suggest that COVID illness is impacting a significant proportion of children long-term and that we need to start thinking about this not only as an acute, but a chronic pediatric condition.
Research Survey – Long-Covid Symptoms
Researchers, most of whom were public health graduate students, interviewed 300 families for the survey. Their children had been diagnosed with COVID-19 illness. Furthermore, acute symptoms last 30 days and chronic long-covid symptoms last more than 120 days. The patients and caregivers completed a follow-up survey from March 2021 to January 2022. It helped them in assessing the symptoms of long-covid.
Key Findings
The key findings included the following
The children who were not diagnosed with MIS-C were 54.49% Hispanic, 19.23% non-Hispanic Black, and 79.49% and were insured by the government. Moreover, they were younger than the children who were diagnosed with MIS-C.
11.5% of the children with MIS-C and 37.8% of children without MIS-C reported acute long-covid. Moreover, 26.9% and 15.3% of children reported chronic long-covid.
Furthermore, female children were reported to have long-covid twice as likely compared to male children.
Luyu Xie, PharmD, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow said,
Our research also highlighted the disparities of age, sex, and race/ethnicity in terms of risk for long COVID symptoms
Specifically, we found older age, being female, and identifying as an ethnic minority were all more likely to report long COVID symptoms. These findings can inform future tailored interventions.
