(ANSA) - ROME, SEPTEMBER 23 - SarsCov2 infection causes lung damage in children and adolescents that persist even a year after the infection;
the outcomes are worse for those who have developed long-Covid.
This happens even if you were sick with Covid-19 in a not so severe form from requesting hospitalization.
This is what emerges from a small study by the University Hospital Erlangen (Germany) published in Radiology.
The researchers evaluated changes in lung structure and function in 54 former pediatric Covid-19 patients aged 5 to 17 years, comparing them to 9 peers who were not infected with SarsCoV2.
Tests showed that structural damage to the lungs that Covid-19 had had is rare: only one of the study participants had morphological changes.
On the other hand, the drop in performance of the lungs is frequent: research has in fact found a reduction of 20-25% in pulmonary function in children and young people who had had Covid-19 compared to peers who had not contracted the infection;
the decrease in lung function was slightly higher in those who had also developed long-Covid.
For the researchers, the data is surprising.
"Persistent symptoms after Covid-19 still cause diagnostic odyssey and this is especially true for young people," said Ferdinand Knieling, one of the study's authors.
"Because children develop a robust, cross-reactive and sustained immune response after SarsCoV2 infection, the lung satisfaction observed in our study is an unexpected finding," the researchers note.
(HANDLE).
