By Amber Roman
Aug 25, 2024, 12:00 PM EDT
USA Today features the story of Rose Lehane Tureen, a high school student in Maine who has been battling persistent COVID symptoms for more than four years.
The impact of COVID on her life was devastating. “I had to decide if I wanted to wither away on the couch in the dark or move forward and do things that made me happy,” she said. With resilience, she decided to move forward, seeking to reclaim the years she felt COVID had robbed her of.
An estimated 5.8 million children in the United States are suffering from long COVID. Lack of recognition of symptoms by doctors, parents and patients themselves has made it difficult to diagnose and treat the condition in many young people. A new study funded by the National Institutes of Health has found that the most common symptoms among adolescents ages 12 to 17 include fatigue, pain, and alterations in taste and smell. On the other hand, younger children, ages 6 to 11, tend to experience concentration problems, sleep disturbances and stomach upset.
This study, which involved 5,300 children and adolescents from more than 60 health care centers in the United States, underscores the need for a diagnostic approach that takes into account age differences. The researchers found that symptoms in younger children, such as phobias and refusal to attend school, do not always match those experienced by adults, highlighting the importance of age-based research.
In 2020, when Rose began experiencing her first symptoms, a lack of understanding about long COVID complicated her diagnosis. It took her more than a year to find a medical team that recognized and treated her symptoms appropriately. Finally, she found a group of specialists at Boston Children’s Hospital who have been helping her through her recovery.
Despite advances in research, there is still much to learn about long COVID, especially in children. Pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Alexandra Yonts notes that most of the current data comes from patients who contracted earlier variants of the virus, and the impact of newer variants like Omicron on the development of long-term symptoms is not yet fully understood.
Rose’s experience highlights the importance of keeping open post-COVID clinics, which are beginning to close due to lack of funding. These centers are vital for patients like her, who require specialized and multidisciplinary care. Aware that the world seems to be moving forward after the pandemic, Rose still faces the daily challenges of her illness and hopes that recent studies can renew the focus on this issue.
“There is an illusion now that the lockdown is over, that COVID is gone,” Rose says. “But for those of us still dealing with the effects of COVID, the struggle continues.”
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