Children & young people with Long Covid (CLoCk) study [COVID-19] [UPH]
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Children & young people with Long Covid (CLoCk) study
IRAS ID
293495
Contact name
Roz Shafran
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN34804192
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 28 days
Research summary
BACKGROUND: Little is known about long COVID even in adults. Risk factors for worse COVID at all ages include obesity, pre-existing comorbidities, learning and neurological disabilities, mental health problems and ethnic minority status. In addition, the children and young people (CYP) likely to be most at risk of long COVID are teenagers – who have always had more risk of persistent fatigue and mental health problems after viral infections.
AIMS: It seems likely that some people remain ill for a long time after infection with the COVID virus. They are said to have ‘long COVID’. We have seen something similar before in CYP, for example, following a common childhood infection called glandular fever. Doctors do not know how to diagnose long COVID in CYP, how common it is or how long it goes on for. There is no simple test for long COVID. We need to know a lot more about it if we want to work out how to treat it.
WHO, WHERE AND HOW: We will ask 30,000 CYP (aged 11-17), half of whom we know had COVID, whether they still have physical and mental health problems at 3, 6, 12 and 24 months afterwards using several online questionnaires. We can compare responders who had a positive COVID test with responders who did not test positive. We can then agree on a medical diagnosis of what long COVID is and how we might treat it.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - South Yorkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/YH/0060
Date of REC Opinion
16 Mar 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion