Scientists Get to the Bottom of COVID’s Worst Pediatric Complication

Scientists at UCSF discovered how kids were developing multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a mysterious, life-threatening condition following a COVID infection.

COVID news and more 2/3/24

We are now at a “HIGH” virus wastewater level for COVID in the United States according to the CDC, down from “VERY HIGH” last week. Cases are on the decline, but we are still at about 900,000 new COVID cases each day. Fortunately, the number of COVID cases in Emergency Departments are

Amazon.ca

Not 'little adults': Experts say long COVID undercounted, misdiagnosed in kids

How methodological pitfalls have created widespread misunderstanding about long COVID

### Key messages High rates of long COVID or post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) continue to be reported in academic journals and subsequently filtered to the public. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently stated ‘nearly one in five American adults who have had COVID-19 still have long Covid’.1 Many scientific publications overestimate PASC prevalence because of overly broad definitions, lack of control groups, inappropriate control groups, and other methodological flaws. This problem is further compounded by inclusion of poorly conducted studies into systematic reviews and meta-analyses that overstate the risk. This is fed to the public by the media and social media, raising undue concern and anxiety. This paper aims to discuss these estimation errors and why epidemiologic research on long COVID has been misleading. For the purposes of this paper, we define long COVID as a syndrome or individual symptoms which are direct sequelae of the virus, SARS-CoV-2, and last at least 12 weeks. Some post-COVID sequelae such as post-ICU syndrome, and post-pneumonia respiratory compromise are common to many upper respiratory viruses. While post-infectious conditions common to other respiratory illnesses may be included in estimates of prevalence of lasting symptoms, we propose future research avoid the umbrella term ‘long COVID’ and …

Long-COVID in children and adolescents: a systematic review and meta-analyses - Scientific Reports

The objective of this systematic review and meta-analyses is to estimate the prevalence of long-COVID in children and adolescents and to present the full spectrum of symptoms present after acute COVID-19. We have used PubMed and Embase to identify observational studies published before February 10th, 2022 that included a minimum of 30 patients with ages ranging from 0 to 18 years that met the National Institute for Healthcare Excellence (NICE) definition of long-COVID, which consists of both ongoing (4 to 12 weeks) and post-COVID-19 (≥ 12 weeks) symptoms. Random-effects meta-analyses were performed using the MetaXL software to estimate the pooled prevalence with a 95% confidence interval (CI). Heterogeneity was assessed using I2 statistics. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviewers and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) reporting guideline was followed (registration PROSPERO CRD42021275408). The literature search yielded 8373 publications, of which 21 studies met the inclusion criteria, and a total of 80,071 children and adolescents were included. The prevalence of long-COVID was 25.24%, and the most prevalent clinical manifestations were mood symptoms (16.50%), fatigue (9.66%), and sleep disorders (8.42%). Children infected by SARS-CoV-2 had a higher risk of persistent dyspnea, anosmia/ageusia, and/or fever compared to controls. Limitations of the studies analyzed include lack of standardized definitions, recall, selection, misclassification, nonresponse and/or loss of follow-up, and a high level of heterogeneity.