NEW DELHI: People of all age groups are at risk of long-term physical and mental health issues after Covid infection, a study has found.
Following Covid-19 infection, there is significant new onset morbidity in children, adolescents and adults across 13 distinct diagnosis and symptom complexes, according to a new study published in the open access journal PLOS Medicine.
Earlier research has established that some people infected with Covid-19 suffer long-term health problems following the acute phase of the disease.
However, evidence on post-acute syndrome is still limited, especially for children and adolescents.
The new study by Martin Roessler of Technische Universitat Dresden, Germany and colleagues, used a healthcare dataset covering nearly half the German population.
Overall, children and adolescents who had been infected with Covid-19 were 30 per cent more likely than controls to have documented health problems beginning three months or more after infection.
Adults with Covid-19 were 33 per cent more likely than controls to have health problems, the findings showed.
Among children and adolescents, rates of malaise/fatigue/exhaustion, cough and throat/chest pain were the most strongly associated with a prior Covid-19 infection, but rates of headache, fever, abdominal pain, anxiety disorder and depression were also increased.
Among adults, smell/taste disturbance, fever, and dyspnea (or difficulty breathing) were most strongly associated with Covid-19 infection but also more common were cough, throat and chest pain, hair loss, fatigue, exhaustion and headache.
"The results of the present study indicate that post-Covid syndrome cannot be dismissed among children and adolescents, " the authors said.
"While children and adolescents appear to be less affected than adults, these findings are statistically significant for all age groups, " they wrote.