United States: A new study shows that some people might still have Long COVID symptoms because the coronavirus is still in their bodies. The research found that people with different Long COVID symptoms were twice as likely to have SARS-CoV-2 proteins in their blood, which means they might have a lasting infection.
In total, over 40% of patients with multiple Long COVID symptoms have such evidence of persistent infection, said the researchers on Oct. 8 in publication Clinical Microbiology and Infection.
As reported by HealthDay, this could open up possibilities of proper management of Long COVID in some participants, said the lead researcher, Zoe Swank, a postdoctoral research fellow or can say a partner at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“Should we be able to define a population in which you have persistent viral symptoms secondary to a viral reservoir within the body, then one might consider using antiviral agents to assist the patient in regard to symptom control,” Swank explained in a news briefing for the hospital.
To compile the data for the study, the team of scientists tested over 1500 blood samples from about 700 covid-19 patients.
The patients who claimed Long COVID affected organs that include the heart, lungs, brain, muscles were more vulnerable to have coronavirus proteins eight weeks after their first infection, the study revealed.
Those in the survey who reported long Covid symptoms impacting at least three major organ systems had a higher rate of positive tests for these viral proteins, at 43%, versus 21% of those who did not report long Covid symptoms, the researchers said.
But that means at least a majority of Long COVID patients do not have a continuing infection, the researchers observed.
‘This finding indicates that there may be other factors forming Long COVID,’ noted the principal investigator of the work, David Walt from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor of pathology. For example, another possible cause could be that the virus damages the immune system, and thus, immune dysfunction may persist after the virus, is gone.”
The idea that virus can linger in the body causing constant symptoms, experts said, is not exclusive to COVID.
“Other viruses are associated with similar post-acute syndromes,” Swank said, using Ebola and Zika viruses as examples.
Researchers however are now conducting follow up studies to better understand whether an ongoing infection causes some people’s long COVID symptoms.
There is still a lot that we don’t know about how this virus affects the people said the researcher Dr. David Goff and who is also the director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung and the Blood Institute.
So there are multiple types of the studies are critical to help investigators better understand the process which is beneath the Long COVID and which will help us bring up closer to identifying the right targets for the treatment.