{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pgph.0000414","title":"SARS-CoV-2 and endemic coronaviruses: Comparing symptom presentation and severity of symptomatic illness among Nicaraguan children","abstract":"It has been proposed that as SARS-CoV-2 transitions to endemicity, children will represent the greatest proportion of SARS-Co-V-2 infections as they currently do with endemic coronavirus infections. While SARS-CoV-2 infection severity is low for children, it is unclear if SARS-CoV-2 infections are distinct in symptom presentation, duration, and severity from endemic coronavirus infections in children. We compared symptom risk and duration of endemic human coronavirus (HCoV) infections from 2011-2016 with SARS-CoV-2 infections from March 2020-September 2021 in a Nicaraguan pediatric cohort. Blood samples were collected from study participants annually in February-April. Respiratory samples were collected from participants that met testing criteria. Blood samples collected in were tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and a subset of 2011-2016 blood samples from four-year-old children were tested for endemic HCoV antibodies. Respiratory samples were tested for each of the endemic HCoVs from 2011-2016 and for SARS-CoV-2 from 2020-2021 via rt-PCR. By April 2021, 854 (49%) cohort participants were ELISA positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Most participants had antibodies against one alpha and one beta coronavirus by age four. We observed 595 symptomatic endemic HCoV infections from 2011-2016 and 121 symptomatic with SARS-CoV-2 infections from March 2020-September 2021. Symptom presentation of SARS-CoV-2 infection and endemic coronavirus infections were very similar, and SARS-CoV-2 symptomatic infections were as or less severe on average than endemic HCoV infections. This suggests that, for children, SARS-CoV-2 may be just another endemic coronavirus. However, questions about the impact of variants and the long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 remain.","journal":"PLOS Global Public Health","year":2022,"id":275306,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9546,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":413550,"name":"John Kubale","orcid":"0000-0001-5571-9774","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":236672,"name":"Guillermina Kuan","orcid":"0000-0002-5251-173X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":236667,"name":"Sergio Ojeda","orcid":"0000-0003-2512-2306","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":944425,"name":"Nivea Vydiswaran","orcid":"0000-0002-0114-6971","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":236668,"name":"Nery Sánchez","orcid":"0000-0002-0070-3895","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":236669,"name":"Miguel Plazaola","orcid":"0000-0002-4153-2615","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":944829,"name":"May Patel","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":390629,"name":"Roger López","orcid":"0000-0002-1091-5955","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":236673,"name":"Ángel Balmaseda","orcid":"0000-0003-1174-4235","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":227052,"name":"Aubree Gordon","orcid":"0000-0002-9352-7877","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":390630,"name":"Aaron M. Frutos","orcid":"0000-0001-6948-3918","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":20,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:28:16.928746Z","pmid":"35785016","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}