Effects on physical activity linger for children after severe COVID-19
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Among ethnically diverse children from low-resource backgrounds, severe COVID-19 illness commonly led to long-term negative impacts on physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness, concluded findings presented here.
“Most children who are infected with COVID-19 will fully recover; however, our study found that a substantial proportion of patients will show signs of long COVID,” Kubra Melike Bozkanat, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics with UT Southwestern Medical Center and pediatric pulmonologist at Children’s Health, told Healio.
Bozkanat and colleagues conducted the retrospective electronic health record review, identifying children/adolescents with previously diagnosed COVID-19 from one pediatric health care system that serves predominantly Medicaid-dependent families.
The study included 312 patients (52.9% boys; mean age at diagnosis, 6.6 years) of whom 20.5% were non-Hispanic White, 19.2% non-Hispanic Black and 54.5% Hispanic; 85.26% were hospitalized due to COVID-19 illness.
Researchers estimated the prevalence of persistent COVID-19 symptoms — defined as the presence of symptoms lasting at least 30 days — via a patient- or caregiver-completed follow-up telephone survey completed between March 2021 and February 2022.
According to results, presented at the CHEST Annual Meeting, 22.8% of patients reported experiencing long COVID. The most prevalent symptoms were as follows: tiredness (6.7%), shortness of breath (5.8%), cough (5.1%), headache (4.5%), difficulty with thinking/concentration (4.5%), disrupted sleep (4.5%), other symptoms (3.8%), anxiety (3.5%), body aches (3.5%), joint pain (3.2%) chest pain (2.9%), intermittent fever (1.9%) and loss of taste/smell (1.6%).
For those who participated in athletics or physical activity in or outside of school, 32% reported a negative impact on physical or athletic performance, with 66.7% reporting it was directly related to COVID-19 illness. Among the specific complaints when returning to physical activity post-COVID illness were tiredness (36.8%) and shortness of breath (10.5%).
After adjusting for demographics, researchers reported that the odds of a decrease in physical activity performance was more than two times higher (OR = 2.17; 95% CI 0.54-8.71) in children with vs. without long COVID.
No differences in decrease in physical activity performance were observed by age, sex or race/ethnicity. Two children received the recommendation to delay re-entry into physical activity.
“Our study is unique in that we had an ethnically diverse population with 55% Hispanic and 19% non-Hispanic Black patient population,” Bozkanat told Healio. “About 23% of the patients reported symptoms of long COVID and the most common symptoms were fatigue, shortness of breath and cough. We also found that among children and teens participating in physical activity, 32% reported that COVID-19 infection had a negative impact in their athletic performance.”
Bozkanat added that she and colleagues have established a Pediatric Post COVID-19 Respiratory Care Clinic at Children’s Medical Center Dallas to follow children and teens with persistent symptoms.
Reference:
Bozkanat KM, et al. Chest. 2022;doi:10.1016/j.chest.2022.08.2170.