Short and Long-Term Wellbeing of Children following SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Systematic Review

Juan Victor Ariel Franco (), Luis Ignacio Garegnani, Gisela Viviana Oltra, Maria-Inti Metzendorf, Leonel Fabrizio Trivisonno, Nadia Sgarbossa, Denise Ducks, Katharina Heldt, Rebekka Mumm, Benjamin Barnes and Christa Scheidt-Nave
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Juan Victor Ariel Franco: Institute of General Practice, Medical Faculty, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
Luis Ignacio Garegnani: Research Department, Instituto Universitario Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires 4234, Argentina
Gisela Viviana Oltra: Research Department, Instituto Universitario Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires 4234, Argentina
Maria-Inti Metzendorf: Institute of General Practice, Medical Faculty, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
Leonel Fabrizio Trivisonno: Department of Health Science, Universidad Nacional de La Matanza, Buenos Aires 1754, Argentina
Nadia Sgarbossa: Department of Health Science, Universidad Nacional de La Matanza, Buenos Aires 1754, Argentina
Denise Ducks: Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch-Institute, 13353 Berlin, Germany
Katharina Heldt: Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch-Institute, 13353 Berlin, Germany
Rebekka Mumm: Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch-Institute, 13353 Berlin, Germany
Benjamin Barnes: Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch-Institute, 13353 Berlin, Germany
Christa Scheidt-Nave: Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch-Institute, 13353 Berlin, Germany

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 21, 1-16

Abstract: Post-COVID conditions in children and adolescents were mostly investigated as the incidence of individual or clusters of symptoms. We aimed to describe the findings of studies assessing key outcomes related to global wellbeing and recovery in children and adolescents from a public health perspective. We searched the Cochrane COVID-19 Study Register and WHO COVID-19 Global literature on coronavirus disease database on 5 November 2021 and tracked ongoing studies published after this date. We included observational studies on children and adolescents with a follow-up greater than 12 weeks and focused on the outcomes of quality of life, recovery/duration of symptoms, school attendance and resource use/rehabilitation. We assessed their methodological quality, and we prepared a narrative synthesis of the results. We included 21 longitudinal and 4 cross-sectional studies (6 with a control group) with over 68 thousand unvaccinated children and adolescents with mostly asymptomatic or mild disease. Study limitations included convenience sampling, a poor description of their study population and heterogeneous definitions of outcomes. Quality of life was not largely affected in adolescents following COVID-19, but there might be greater impairment in young children and in those with more severe forms of the disease (4 studies). There might also be an impairment in daily activities and increased school absenteeism following COVID-19, but the findings were heterogeneous (5 studies). A total of 22 studies provided highly variable estimates based on heterogeneous definitions of overall persistence of symptoms (recovery), ranging from 0 to 67% at 8–12 weeks and 8 to 51% at 6–12 months. We found limited data on resource use and the need for rehabilitation. One controlled study indicated that the quality of life of infected children and adolescents might not substantially differ from controls. All controlled studies found a higher burden of persistent symptoms in COVID-19 cases compared with test-negative controls or cases of influenza. There is limited evidence on the short and long-term well-being of children following SARS-CoV-2 infection. High-quality longitudinal studies with control groups are needed to describe the outcomes in this population, especially in vaccinated children and those affected by new variants of the virus.

Keywords: COVID-19; post-COVID-conditions; children; public health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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