By David Tuller, DrPH
Physician Binita Kane, a lung specialist in Manchester, England, and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester’s School of Biological Sciences, has been outspoken on the subject of long Covid in children. Her passion about the issue has been fueled by her own daughter’s struggle with prolonged symptoms after an acute coronavirus infection. In an article in The Conversation called “Supporting a child with long COVID – tips from parents of children living with the condition,” Dr Kane and two co-authors wrote this:
“The latest figures from the UK’s Office for National Statistics show an estimated 69,000 children are living with long COVID, 41,000 of whom have had symptoms for at least a year…The most common symptoms of long COVID in children are fatigue and headaches, but young people can also have a range of other symptoms including chest pain, persistent cough, dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain, anxiety and low mood.”
Dr Kane is currently a voluntary advisor to the group Long COVID Kids. We recently spoke about her own family’s experiences, what she sees happening with other families, and related issues:
Many thanks to Dr Kane for sharing her experience and knowledge about Long covid with David. Should we also add new-onset asthma -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOCuJKaZaiU – to the list of possible harmful consequences of covid-19 infection?
Many thanks for sure. And just to reiterate as these authors mention:
“Neurological Dysfunction in Long COVID Should Not Be Labelled as Functional Neurological Disorder” (2023) doi.org/10.3390/v15030783
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/15/3/783
Some may find this talk by Dr. Gavin Giovannoni on Multiple sclerosis (MS) quite interesting. He is a proponent of the Epstein-Barr virus etiology in MS which has been implicated in a number of diseases including ME/CFS and long COVID. The video is the first link. There is much medical-scientific discussion in this video, certainly far beyond my limited knowledge base, but the talk and it’s paradigmatic concepts he mentions is worth listening to.
The second link is to an article of his where he mentions, in relation to MS “Using a philosophical approach or deductive reasoning, we challenge the dominant clinico-radiological worldview that defines multiple sclerosis (MS) as a focal inflammatory disease of the central nervous system (CNS). We provide a range of evidence to argue that the ‘real MS’ is in fact driven primarily by a smouldering pathological disease process.” …
The future of future of Multiple Sclerosis therapy
https://youtu.be/Vx-kMYtz9go
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Smouldering multiple sclerosis: the ‘real MS
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17562864211066751
As far as I can see, there’s no mention here -https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj-2023-074937 – of new-onset asthma following covid infection, just that asthma could co-exist with post-covid problems so seemingly implying that it is not a post-covid problem itself. (It looks to me like Table 1 has asthma down as a non-covid-related differential diagnosis.) I know someone in their 60s who, post-covid, has new-onset asthma that was picked up via FeNO testing in secondary, not primary, care. This makes me wonder: Do/should UK GPs routinely perform this test? Would this patient have been tested if their GP had referred them to a Long Covid clinic rather than a respiratory clinic? How many patients with post-covid new-onset asthma are potentially being missed and put at risk because it’s not being posited as a post-covid problem?