- Delaney DePue, 15, received COVID-19 last summer and is still struggling to catch her 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 symptoms of long-distance.
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Delaney DePue, a 15-year-old from Fort Walton Beach, Florida, used to train 20 hours a week for competitive dance. Now, even running errands can take your breath away, reported Carmen Heredia Rodriguez of Kaiser Health News.
Her crisis began after she contracted COVID-19 last summer, a condition from which she still did not seem to recover. Doctors 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.
Although young people tend to do well if exposed to the coronavirus, some become seriously ill and less die. And others, like DePue, are among a growing group of so-called long haulers, or survivors of COVID-19 who continue to struggle with the most diverse symptoms, including fatigue, mental confusion, severe bodily pain, heart palpitations and even delirium.
Health professionals do not know exactly why these symptoms develop, or why some people with COVID-19 recover quickly and others involuntarily do so for a long time.
COPD progressively worsens over time
COPD is a progressive, incurable disease that makes it difficult to breathe. People with it may experience wheezing, chest tightness, coughing, respiratory infections and fatigue due to lung damage.
It is uncommon in children because their lungs have not had time to be damaged in this way; typically, children with COPD symptoms have asthma or cystic fibrosis, not COPD.
But DePue’s case suggests that COVID-19 may accelerate lung damage in some children, as it does in some adults with the virus. An imaging study of people who died of COVID-19 found “extensive and persistent lung damage”, helping doctors better understand long-haul trucks, Reuters reported.
“The findings indicate that COVID-19 is not simply a disease caused by the death of cells infected by viruses, but it is probably the consequence of these abnormal cells persisting for long periods inside the lungs,” Mauro Giacca, a professor at King’s College London who co- led the work, he said.
Serious illness is rare among children, but more data 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 symptoms or mild symptoms, but about 2,000 have developed multisystemic inflammatory syndrome in children, a potentially deadly problem involving high fever and inflammation. Black and Hispanic children account for the majority of cases of serious illness or death from COVID-19.
A subset of children has developed long-term complications, so some hospitals are building clinics to help control their symptoms and rule out other potential causes, reported Rodriguez. Clinics and bootcamps for long-distance adults are also opening up.
In both cases, patients and doctors have more questions than answers.
“There is an urgent need to collect more data on the long-term impacts of the pandemic on children,” writes the AAP and CHA report, “including ways in which the virus can harm the physical health of infected children in the long term, as well as as its emotional and mental health effects. “