Image credit: Gustavo Fring, Pexels
One new study shows 30% of preteens and teens who were in a cohort of young people with Long COVID were still struggling with the condition 2 years after their initial acute SARS-CoV-2 infection.
A study published in Nature Communications Medicine evaluated a population of young people (11-17 years of age) who met the definition of Long COVID. The study’s investigators gathered data from the National Long COVID in Children and Young People (CloCk) study in England, which is the world’s largest longitudinal cohort study on Long COVID in children.1-2
In the study were 12,632 participants, and of them, 943 young people tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. They were asked to respond to questions about symptoms at 4 intervals: 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, and 24 months after their first positive test (Table 1). 2
For the 943 participants who tested positive, 233 met the research definition of Long COVID 3 months after their initial positive test. At the 6 month mark, 135 continued to maintain Long COVID symptoms. At 12 months, 94 continued to fulfill the Long COVID research definition.2
The investigators reported that 68 of these 943 young people (7.2%) continued to have Long COVID when contacted 24 months after their initial positive test. At 24 months, 165 of the 233 young people (70%) who had Long COVID, and provided information at every time point in the research had recovered. A subset of this group (30%) had still not recovered from the condition 24 months later.2
“Our findings show that for teenagers who fulfilled our research definition of Long COVID 3 months after a positive test for the COVID virus, the majority have recovered after 2 years. This is good news but we intend to do further research to try to better understand why 68 teenagers had not recovered,” study chief investigator and first author, Professor Sir Terence Stephenson, said in a written statement.2
Table 1. This table demonstrates the number of Long COVID cases at the different time measurement intervals.
Table credit: ChatGPT
Vaccine’s Effect on Long COVID Prevention
A new study in eClinicalMedicine, which is part of The Lancet Discovery Medicine, reported that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) was efficacious in reducing the risk of Long COVID outcomes in both children and adolescents.3
Investigators looked at vaccination during the Delta and Omicron periods and they found during the Delta variant’s period being the dominant strain, the mRNA vaccine was 95.4% effective in reducing Long COVID in adolescents. During the Omicron phase, the vaccine was 75.1% effective in reducing Long COVID in adolescents, and was 60.1% effective in reducing Long COVID in children (Table 2).3
“Our findings indicated a high overall protective effect of BNT162b2 against long COVID during the period dominated by the Delta variant and moderate protective effects during the Omicron period,” the investigators wrote. “The estimated direct effects suggested that beyond the protective role of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 infection, pre-infection vaccination does not significantly modify the likelihood of Long COVID (ie, conclusive or probable Long COVID as well as body-system-focused PASC condition clusters). The estimated direct and indirect effects indicated that the vaccine’s primary advantage in protecting against long COVID outcomes stems from its ability to reduce the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection.”3
It is important to note this was a large, real-world study of nearly 300,000 children and teens. The investigators included the following number of participants: “112,590 adolescents (88,811 vaccinated) were included in the cohort for the analysis against Delta variant, and 188,894 children (101,277 vaccinated), and 84,735 adolescents (37,724 vaccinated) were included for the analysis against Omicron variant.”3
Table 2. This table summarizes vaccine effectiveness, direct effects, and indirect effects for children and adolescents during the Delta and Omicron phases.
Table credit: ChatGPT
They gathered data from 20 health systems in the RECOVER PCORnet electronic health record program. There were 3 independent cohorts including adolescents that were ages 12–20 years during the Delta phase, and children that were ages 5–11 years, and adolescents again that were ages (12–20 years) during the Omicron phase.3
“This study profoundly enriches our understanding of the BNT162b2 vaccine’s impact on Long COVID risks within the US pediatric demographic, emphasizing the critical role of vaccination and infection prevention in public health policymaking,” the investigators concluded.3
References
1.Stephenson, T, Pinto Pereira, SM, Nugawela, M.D. et al. A 24-month National Cohort Study examining long-term effects of COVID-19 in children and young people. Commun Med 4, 255 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-024-00657-x
2.70% of young people with long Covid recover within two years. Eurekalert press release. December 4, 2024. Accessed December 7, 2024.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1066700
3.Wu Q et al. Real-world effectiveness and causal mediation study of BNT162b2 on long COVID risks in children and adolescents. December 6, 2024.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00541-8/fulltext
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