New research suggests stomach trouble more predictive of the Covid-19 virus in young people than a cough. A study was carried out in the UK with the participation of more than 990 children aged between two and 15. The results of the research has led to calls for the official NHS list of symptoms to be updated with experts saying that diarrhoea and vomiting could be an important sign of Covid-19 in children.
The checklist for coronavirus in children currently includes just three symptoms: a high temperature, a new, continuous cough, and a loss or change to the sense of smell or taste. The latter was added to the list in May.
Generally, studies around Covid-19 in adults have flagged symptoms including muscle pain, fatigue, confusion, chest pains and often include stomach upset. A yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study by researchers at King’s College London, based on data from the Covid symptom study app, found that symptoms fall into six main groups in adults, one of them being mainly gastrointestinal issues.
Furthermore, researchers at Queen’s University Belfast say they have confirmed that an upset stomach is a symptom of Covid-19 in children, and revealed it appears to be a key symptom of the disease.
“In our group, diarrhoea and vomiting were more predictive than, say, cough or even changes in smell and taste,” said Dr Tom Waterfield, the first author of the research. “If you want to actually diagnose infection in children, we need to start looking at diarrhoea and vomiting, not just upper respiratory tract symptoms.”
Dr Waterfield said that going by the current three recognised symptoms, testing symptomatic children would identify 76% of cases, assuming a perfectly accurate test, while adding gastrointestinal symptoms to the checklist would bring the figure to 97%.
The study took place over a four month period between April and July and involved more than 990 children of healthcare workers from across the UK aged between two and 15. None had been admitted to hospital with Covid-19.
All of the participating children had a blood sample taken, which was tested for antibodies to coronavirus, and data was also gathered on whether they had experienced any symptoms – important to note is that this was done before antibody results were revealed.
The team found that 68 children – 6.9% of the total – had antibodies for the disease, suggesting they had had Covid-19, and half of these 68 reported having had symptoms.
Some symptoms were particularly common, especially fever and headache, but 19% of the children with Covid-19 antibodies reported gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach cramps. For children without antibodies this figure was just 3%.
While only 34 children were symptomatic in the study, Dr Waterfield said the findings were important, not least as diarrhoea and vomiting were clear and obvious problems to spot.
Prof Tim Spector, of King’s College London, said the findings supported similar research by his team. “Our data on nearly 250,000 children from the Covid symptom study app suggest that children who test positive have a wide range of symptoms and that a cough is not as common in children as it is adults,” he said. We are also seeing gut symptoms and loss of appetite appear commonly as well as the classical fever,” Spector said, adding that while gastrointestinal problems were seen in both adults and children, they were slightly more common in children compared with other symptoms.