Case report and systematic review suggest that children may experience similar long-term effects to adults after clinical COVID-19

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 pre-print 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.

Keywords: coronavirus; fatigue; heart problems; long COVID; pandemic; school attendance.