Washington, Jan 12 (IANS): The Children's Hospital Los Angeles will take a holistic approach to understand how early inflammatory and tissue responses can predict long-term health consequences of Covid-19 in children, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

People infected with SARS-CoV-2 typically recover within a few days or weeks. However some individuals have long-term effects that persist for multiple weeks, months, or even years, known as long Covid, reports Xinhua news agency.

While considerable efforts have gone into understanding how Covid-19 affects the body in adults, much less is known about how the virus affects children, and how those effects manifest into long-term health consequences of the infection, said the FDA.

The new project will study clinical cohorts of children to try to identify a Covid-19-specific inflammatory and tissue damage disease signature.

The project also seeks to identify potential biomarkers that correlate to a Covid-19-specific inflammatory and tissue damage disease signature during the disease course, said the FDA.

Children's Hospital Los Angeles will integrate molecular and clinical assessments of paediatric patient samples to develop a model that can predict whether a child is more likely to have long-term negative outcomes from Covid-19.