- Delaney DePue, 15, received COVID-19 last summer and is still struggling to catch his breath.
- She was diagnosed with COPD, which is considered a disease of the elderly.
- She joins an increasingly visible group of young people who appear to have long-term symptoms.
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Delaney DePue, a 15-year-old in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, typically practiced 20 hours a week for competitive dance. Even running assignments can now leave her short of breath, Kamen Health News’ Carmen Heredia Rodriguez reported.
Her slump began after she contracted COVID-19 last summer, a condition she apparently has not yet recovered from. Doctors have diagnosed her with chronic inflammatory lung disease, a condition that researchers say is “considered a disease of the elderly” and is usually caused by smoking.
While young people tend to do well when exposed to the coronavirus, some become seriously ill, and die less. And others, like DePue, count among a growing pool of so-called long-smokers, or COVID-19 survivors who continue to fight wide symptoms, including fatigue, mental fog, severe body aches, palpitations and even delirium.
Healthcare professionals do not know exactly why these symptoms develop, or why some people recover quickly from COVID-19, and others are unconscious for the long term.
COPD gradually gets worse over time
COPD is an incurable, progressive disease that makes it difficult to breathe. People with it can experience wheezing, chest tightness, cough, respiratory infections and fatigue due to lung damage.
This is unusual in children because they have not had the time to be harmed to such an extent; children with COPD symptoms usually have asthma or cystic fibrosis, not COPD.
But the case of DePue suggests that COVID-19 can accelerate lung damage in some children, as in some adults with the virus. One imaging study of people who died from COVID-19 found ‘persistent and extensive lung damage’, which helps doctors better understand long haul, Reuters reports.
“The findings indicate that COVID-19 is not merely a disease caused by the death of virus-infected cells, but is probably the result of these abnormal cells that persist in the lungs for a long time,” said Mauro Giacca. a professor at King’s College London, said. which led to the work, said.
Severe illness is rare among children, but more information is needed
On February 25, nearly 3.17 million children tested positive for COVID-19, according to a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. This is 13.1% of the total cases among states that report by age.
Most have no or mild symptoms, but about 2,000 have developed a multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, a potentially fatal problem with high fever and inflammation. Black and Hispanic children represent the most common cases of serious illness or death due to COVID-19.
Enough a subgroup of children have developed complications for long distractors that some hospitals set up clinics to help their symptoms and eliminate other possible causes, Rodriguez reported. Adult clinics and “bootcamps” for adults are also opening.
In both cases, patients and clinicians have more questions than answers.
“There is an urgent need to gather more information on the long-term effects of the pandemic on children,” writes the AAP and CHA report, “including ways in which the virus can harm the long-term physical health of infected children. as well as the consequences for emotional and mental health. “