Post-COVID-19-associated morbidity in children, adolescents, and adults: A matched cohort study including more than 157,000 individuals with COVID-19 in Germany (10 November 2022)

Summary

Long-term health sequelae of COVID-19 are a major public health concern. However, evidence on Long Covid is still limited, particularly for children and adolescents. Using comprehensive healthcare data on approximately 46% of the German population, Roesller et al. investigated post-COVID-19-associated morbidity in children/adolescents and adults.

Content

What did the researchers do and find?

• The researchers used comprehensive healthcare data from a sample of almost half of the German population to investigate the risk of post-COVID-19 disease patterns in children, adolescents and adults.
• They identified all patients with polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 (157,134 individuals in total, 11,950 children/adolescents and 145,184 adults) and matched them to a control cohort of individuals with identical age and sex, and similar preexisting medical conditions without COVID-19.
• They recorded medical conditions documented by a physician at least 3 months after the date of COVID-19 diagnosis and compared them to the matched controls without COVID-19.
• The researchers observed increased rates of newly diagnosed physical and mental health problems in the COVID-19 group, compared to the control group, which differed according to age.

What do these findings mean?

Although healthcare utilisation may differ between those who have suffered COVID-19 and those who have not, the results of this study indicate that people of all age groups (children, adolescents, and adults) are at risk of Long Covid and that the spectrum of health problems differs between age groups.