There is no definitive test to diagnose long COVID or post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection and doctors rely on reported patient symptoms to rule out other conditions, but researchers are making progress. A new study has taken a significant step by identifying key symptoms of long COVID in children and adolescents and developing a tool that could help in diagnosis. Most research on long COVID focuses on adults, leaving gaps in understanding the condition in children, which can lead to oversights or misdiagnoses, Dr.
Rachel Gross, assistant professor of pediatrics and population health at New York University (NYU)’s Grossman School of Medicine and corresponding author, told The Epoch Times. “Children can develop long COVID and their symptoms may be different from those in adults—as well as among child age groups,” she noted. Some of the symptoms the researchers identified in children include back or neck pains, fear of crowded places, feeling tired after walking, along with some common long COVID symptoms.
They identified 14 overlapping prolonged symptoms that were more common among both school-age children (6 to 11 years) and adolescents (12 to 17 years) with a previous COVID-19 history. In the index for school-age children, some had symptoms of headache, trouble with memory/focusing, trouble with sleeping, and stomach pain. Common symptoms that made it to the adolescent index include the following: Daytime tiredness/sleepiness or low energy Body/muscle/joint pa.