In a new study, researchers found that one-quarter of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 aged 18-39 years developed pneumonia, underlining the danger the disease represents to young people.
The research was conducted by a team at Keimyung University Dongsan Hospital and elsewhere.
Many countries that had been controlling their COVID-19 pandemic are now seeing a resurgence of the virus, especially among young people.
The low alertness of young people has become a social problem around the world since it is known that the progress toward severe cases is low in young people.
In this study, the team analyzed the incidence of pneumonia and the clinical characteristics of young patients.
The retrospective study was conducted on adult patients aged 18 to 39 from February 18 to March 31, 2020.
The patient group without pneumonia and the patient group with pneumonia were compared.
Symptoms were presented in the following order: cough (168, 53%), sore throat (83, 26%), fever (82, 26%), rhinorrhoea/runny nose (99, 31%), myalgia (muscle pain) (62, 20%), chill (51, 16%), diarrhoea (46, 15%).
The team found 71 (23%) confirmed cases of pneumonia on chest X-rays. Of the 85 patients who had a CT scan performed, 43 were confirmed to have pneumonia.
In around a quarter (16/71, 23%) of cases, chest X-rays remained abnormal on the last chest X-ray before hospital discharge, which for asymptomatic patients was 10 days after diagnosis; for patients with symptoms, hospital discharge occurred after two consecutive negative tests for COVID-19.
Symptoms of fever, cough, diarrhea, and shortness of breath were statistically significantly more frequent in the pneumonia group.
Blood test results showed particularly high C-reactive protein (a sign of systemic inflammation) in the pneumonia group: more than 8 times higher than in patients without pneumonia.
There was also one asymptomatic case that subsequently developed pneumonia.
The authors concluded that pneumonia occurred in 26% of young hospitalized patients. Young people should also be aware of the risk of pneumonia or severe pneumonia due to COVID-19.
One author of the study is Assistant Professor Hyun ah Kim.
The study was presented at the ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Disease.
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