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Feb. 8 (UPI) — Children who are male or Black American and those who are obese are at higher risk for severe COVID-19 and a potentially life-threatening complication called MIS-C, a study published Tuesday by JAMA Network Open found.
Male children are 37% more likely to develop serious illness following coronavirus infection, while Black American youths have a 25% higher risk, the data showed.
All obese children, meaning they are severely overweight, are 19% more likely to experience severe COVID-19, the researchers said.
“Our objective was to provide a detailed clinical characterization of the largest cohort of U.S. pediatric [COVID-19] cases to date,” wrote the researchers, who represented multiple academic hospitals across the country.
The findings cover the period during which the Delta variant was the predominant one in circulation in the United States, they said.
Delta was overtaken by the Omicron variant, which may cause more serious illness in children, in December, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study tracked the health of nearly 1.1 million children and teens ages 19 years and younger who were tested for COVID-19 from the start of the pandemic in March 2020 through September of last year.
Just over 167,000, or about 16%, of those included in the analysis tested positive for the virus and more than 10,000, or 6%, of them were hospitalized as a result, the researchers said.
Of the hospitalized children and teens, 1,423, or 14%, were considered to have severe COVID-19 because of needing ventilator support and other aggressive treatments to maintain breathing, the data showed.
One percent of the hospitalized young people died from the virus, according to the researchers.
Based on the analysis, males are nearly 60% more likely to develop a complication of COVID-19 called MIS-C, or multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children, the researchers said.
In MIS-C, different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes and gastrointestinal tract, according to the CDC.
Similar to Kawasaki disease, the condition can be fatal, though it resolves in most cases with treatment, the agency says.
Black-American children are 44% more likely to develop MIS-C, while children age 12 years and younger are 81% more likely to do so, the data showed.
Obese children have a 76% higher risk for MIS-C from COVID-19, the researchers said.
Previous studies have found that children, particularly teens, with chronic health conditions, such as diabetes and obesity, are more likely to develop serious illness after infection.
“This report provides preliminary data on differences among children infected with [the virus] in the era prior to Delta variant dominance compared with those in the Delta era, and we found a similar hospitalization rate,” the researchers wrote.
“That odds for severe versus moderate disease decreased during the Delta era … may reflect that more previously healthy children were hospitalized in the Delta era,” they said.