Penn researchers recently discovered a relationship between body mass index and certain Long COVID symptoms in children and young adults.
The research team — which included faculty from the Stanford University School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and other medical institutions — used electronic health records data to divide patients into four groups to track symptoms across different obesity levels. The study is one of over 100 funded by the National Institutes of Health as part of the RECOVER initiative, which seeks to “understand, diagnose, prevent, and treat” Long COVID patients.
Long COVID is a chronic condition that occurs after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Symptoms — ranging from mild to severe — can last weeks, months, or years following infection.
Fifth-year applied mathematics and computational science graduate student Bingyu Zhang told The Daily Pennsylvanian that their research explores a possible association between an individual’s obesity category and Long COVID outcomes — particularly gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and mental outcomes.
“COVID-19 is not diminished now,” Zhang said. “Many studies are interested in infectious diseases like influenza, [but] I do think COVID-19 is a long-term topic that we need to take a look into and keep in mind.”
The study focused on patients ages five to 20 — a relatively “understudied” population — and analyzed symptoms that occurred between 28 and 179 days after infection, which fifth-year applied mathematics and computational science graduate student Yiwen Lu explained is known as the “post-acute phase.”
“It is a clinically meaningful phase to look at the outcome, because it’s not the chronic conditions, and it’s not right after the infection,” she explained. “We want to see if there is some signal of elevated risk, and some of them might extend to chronic face, but some might not.”
The researchers recorded chest pain as the “most common cardiovascular symptom” and abdominal pain as the “most prevalent gastrointestinal symptom” from Long COVID. Both effects showed little difference across BMI categories.
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However, other symptoms did appear to be correlated with higher BMI. For instance, high blood pressure increased with higher BMI, while fainting decreased. Overall, the prevalence of gastrointestinal symptoms increased with higher BMI.
While the study did use a “representative and well-sampled cohort,” Lu cautioned against overgeneralizing results.
“The meaning of this finding is mainly to let the clinicians be risk-aware — they might want to keep this in mind when they do follow-ups,” Lu said.
“When it comes down to individual level for each of these kids, they should still consult with their own clinician instead of relying on this result, because this is just evidence of association,” she added.
