Dödligt virus från Kina orsakar panik (SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19)

Även barn misstänks kunna drabbas av långvariga besvär av covid-19. Det säger Jonas F Ludvigsson, professor vid Karolinska institutet, som i en rapport beskriver svenska barn med sannolik "long covid".

Recent data suggest that adults may experience long-term symptoms after COVID-19 infection, but if such symptoms also occur in children is still unknown. Children tend to have milder COVID-19 than adults, but in a case-report from Sweden, Professor and pediatrician Jonas F Ludvigsson describes five children with potential “long COVID”. These findings, together with a systematic review of long COVID in children, are published in the journal Acta Paediatrica.

Abstract

Aim: Persistent symptoms in adults after COVID-19 are emerging and the term long COVID is
increasingly appearing in the literature. However, paediatric data are scarce .

Methods: This paper contains a case report of five Swedish children and the long-term
symptoms reported by their parents. It also includes a systematic literature review of the
MEDLINE, EMBASE and Web of Science databases and the medRxiv/bioRxiv preprint servers up
to 2 November 2020.

Results: The five children with potential long covid had a median age of 12 years (range 9-15)
and four were girls. They had symptoms for 6-8 months after their clinical diagnoses of COVID-
19. None were hospitalised at diagnosis, but one was later admitted for peri-myocarditis. All five
children had fatigue, dyspnoea, heart palpitations or chest pain and four had headaches,
difficulties concentrating, muscle weakness, dizziness and sore throats. Some had improved after
6-8 months, but they all suffered from fatigue and none had fully returned to school. The
systematic review identified 179 publications and 19 of these were deemed relevant and read in
detail. None contained any information on long COVID in children.

Conclusion: Children may experience similar long COVID symptoms to adults and females may be
more affected.