Risk of new diagnoses in secondary care following SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory infections among school-aged individuals in England.
The aim of this project is to investigate the association of a range of diagnoses with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and with previous non-SARS-CoV-2 RTIs in school-aged individuals, and understand differences by demographic and clinical characteristics.
COVID-19 infection (also known as Covid, or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection) is mostly mild in children and young people. When someone continues to have symptoms weeks after their COVID-19 infection, this is known as long-COVID. Previous studies, and an online discussion group with families affected by long-COVID, have shown that these long-lasting symptoms are wide-ranging and can be severe. Some children and young people have new diagnoses relating to their breathing, heart, or other aspects of their physical and mental health when they develop long-COVID.
At the moment we don’t know:
- How many children and young people with COVID-19 infection go on to develop long-COVID.
- Which new diagnoses are associated with long-COVID.
- Which groups of children and young people have the highest risk (chance) of developing long-COVID and having new diagnoses.
- In what ways the healthcare needs for long-COVID in children and young people are different to those for long-term health effects from other infections.
This research will focus on which diagnoses school-aged individuals with COVID-19 infection may go on to have. It will also tell us which groups of school-aged individuals are most likely to have a new diagnosis after COVID-19 infection (e.g., those who are older, or those with pre-existing illnesses like asthma). Finally, we will compare our findings to those for other respiratory infections, to see in what ways long-COVID is different. We will use health record data for school-aged individuals (4-18 years) for the whole of England to carry out our research.
Our aim is to take an exploratory approach. First, we will investigate associations between infection and hospital-based diagnoses using grouped diagnosis categories. Each diagnosis category will be defined by type (e.g., respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, musculoskeletal etc.). Second, and based on these initial results, we can explore whether there are associations with sub-categories of diagnoses or with a single diagnosis.
The results of this study will help us know which diagnoses children and young people have following COVID-19 or following other respiratory infections, how many children and young people are affected, and which groups of children are particularly affected. If we know these things, we can plan healthcare services better. Doctors will have more information to help answer the questions families have about long-COVID. They will also be able to have more informed conversations with families and offer better care and advice to children and young people who have, or who are more likely to get, long-COVID.
Citation details to follow
- View the analysis code used in NHS England's SDE for England
- View the phenotyping algorithms and codelists used in NHS England's SDE for England
This is a sub-project of project CCU079 approved by the CVD-COVID-UK / COVID-IMPACT Approvals & Oversight Board (sub-project: CCU079_01).
This study is funded by the NIHR (Dr Katharine Looker, NIHR Advanced Fellowship [NIHR302934]). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR, NHS or the UK Department of Health and Social Care.
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