A patient in the UK with a severely weak immune system had COVID-19 for almost a year and a half, scientists said, emphasizing the importance of protecting vulnerable people from the corovirus.
There is no way to know if this is the longest-running COVID-19 infection because not everyone is tested, especially regularly, as in this case.
But for 505 days, “it’s definitely the longest infection,” Drs. Luke Blagdon Snell, an infectious disease specialist at Guy’s & St. Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust.
Their study investigated what mutations occur – and whether variants develop – in people with chronic infections. This included nine patients who tested positive for the virus for at least eight weeks. They all have weakened immune systems due to organ transplants, HIV treatment, cancer, or other diseases. No one was identified for privacy reasons.
Repeated tests showed that their infection lasted an average of 73 days. Two had the virus for more than a year. Previously, the researchers said, the longest known case confirmed by a PCR test lasted 335 days.
Chronic COVID-19 is rare and it differs from COVID-19 in the long term.
“Long -term COVIDs usually suggest that the virus has been eliminated from your body, but symptoms persist,” Snell says. “With ongoing infection, it’s an active and continuous replication of the virus.”
Each time the researchers examined patients, they checked the genetic code of the virus to make sure it was the same strain and that people had not been given COVID-19 more than once. However, the genetic sequence showed that the virus changed over time and mutated during adaptation.
Snell said the mutations were similar to those that appeared later in broad variants, although none of the patients showed new mutations that turned into disturbing variants. Furthermore, there is no evidence that they spread the virus to others.
The man with the longest known infection tested positive in early 2020, was treated with antiviral drugs, and died in 2021. The researchers declined to name the cause of death, and said the man had several other illnesses. .
Five patients survived. Two cleared the infection without treatment, two cleared after treatment, and one still had COVID-19. In the most recent observation made earlier this year, this patient’s infection lasted 412 days.
Researchers hope to develop more treatments to help people with persistent infections defeat the virus.
“We need to remember that there are people who are more susceptible to these problems, such as ongoing infections and serious illness,” Snell said.
Although persistent infections are rare, experts say many people with compromised immune systems remain at risk of severe COVID-19 and seek to protect themselves safely after governments remove restrictions and put in place the masks. And it’s not always easy to know who they are, says Dr. Wesley Long, a Texas Houston Methodist School pathologist who was not part of the study.
“To people, masks are a careful thing to do and a way to protect others,” he said.
The Associated Press Department of Health and Science receives support from the Science Education Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. AP is solely responsible for all content.
Source: Huffpost
