In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors started noticing something unusual. Some people with weakened immune systems were getting sick with COVID-19 and staying sick for a really long time – weeks or even months.
This situation worried the doctors. They thought that these long-lasting infections in weak patients might lead to new, possibly more dangerous, types of the virus.
But a recent study has brought some good news. This research was done by a team led by Dr. Adam Lauring at Michigan Medicine, as part of a bigger project called the IVY Network, managed from Vanderbilt University.
They looked closely at 150 people with weak immune systems who had COVID-19. These patients were part of five health systems across the United States in 2022.
The study was pretty thorough. The patients were asked a lot of questions and had to give nasal swabs from when they first got sick until they didn’t have the virus anymore. Dr. Lauring and his team wanted to understand who was more likely to have these long infections.
The patients in this study were dealing with different health problems that made their immune systems weak. Some had cancer affecting their B cells, others had organ transplants, some were living with AIDS, and some had other immune system issues.
The results were interesting. Only a quarter of the patients still had signs of the virus after 21 days. And even fewer, just 8%, actually had a live virus in them for that long. On average, patients were virus-free in about nine days.
This was a bit of a surprise because the team expected more people to have long-lasting infections.
The study showed that people with AIDS and B-cell cancers were more likely to have these long infections. However, people with autoimmune diseases or other types of cancer were less likely to.
Also, patients who had treatments targeting their B cells, like rituximab or CAR-T therapy, often had the virus for a longer time. This points to how important B cells and the antibodies they make are for fighting infections.
Another key finding was that the virus in these long-term patients didn’t often change into new variants. This is important because it means that these patients might not be a big source of new virus types that could be a problem for everyone else.
Dr. Lauring explained that the way a virus can dodge the immune system in people with weak immune systems is different from how it happens in healthier people.
This means that while these patients might have the virus for longer, it doesn’t necessarily lead to new, widespread threats.
The study helps us understand which patients with weak immune systems are most at risk. This is crucial for guiding future efforts to develop better treatments for these vulnerable patients.
As the world continues to build immunity through vaccines and exposure to the virus, keeping an eye on these patients for new virus variants might not be as critical as once thought.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about Vitamin D deficiency linked to severe COVID-19, and how diets could help manage post-COVID syndrome.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies about new evidence on rare blood clots after COVID-19 vaccination, and results showing zinc could help reduce COVID-19 infection risk.
The research findings can be found in Lancet Microbe.
Copyright © 2024 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
