New clues emerge as to whether vaccines can help fight the long Covid

Other recent research indicates that vaccination may reduce the likelihood of developing long-term symptoms of Covid-19 in the first place.

Long Covid is one of the most puzzling effects of Covid-19. It is estimated that 10 to 30% of people develop symptoms that last for months after their initial infection, including fatigue, cognitive problems, shortness of breath or a fast heartbeat. Doctors do not fully understand the disease and have few treatment options.

Studies on the long Covid and vaccines are being watched closely. Some officials in the Biden administration have advocated wide use of vaccine boosters to help prevent Covid-19 infection and further reduce the risk of developing long-term Covid, the Wall Street Journal reported.

A September study in the medical journal Lancet found that fully vaccinated people who contracted a breakthrough infection were around 50% less likely to develop a long Covid than people unvaccinated with Covid-19. In the vaccinated group, 5% of people developed a long Covid, against 11.5% in the unvaccinated group.

“This is a very large and significant reduction,” says Claire Steves, geriatrician and clinical scholar at King’s College London and lead author of the study. People who have been vaccinated are also much less likely to be infected in the first place, she notes.

Another recent study looked at whether vaccination could help reduce symptoms in people after they developed a long Covid. Preliminary results from a French study in September revealed that a group of long Covid patients reported an average of 13 symptoms four months after vaccination against 15 symptoms previously.

The remission rate in the vaccinated group was 16.6% four months after vaccination, compared to 7.5% in a control group of long unvaccinated Covid patients. Vaccinated patients also reported that the disease had less impact on their lives.

The results are preliminary and have not yet been peer reviewed; they were published on the Lancet preprint server. The study included 455 long-term Covid patients who were vaccinated after the onset of their symptoms and 455 people from a control group who had long-term Covid but were not vaccinated. Most of the vaccine participants in the study had received the Pfizer vaccine.

Viet-Thi Tran, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Paris and lead author of the study, hypothesizes that vaccination can eradicate a viral reservoir in the body that can cause long-term symptoms in some patients . But he says it’s also possible there’s a placebo effect: patients feel better after being vaccinated because they expect it.

Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology at Yale University who studies long Covid, says the French study is the first large-scale examination of the impact of vaccines on long Covid patients. (She did not participate in the French study.)

The results are consistent with the theory that vaccination can eliminate some remaining viruses that trigger symptoms, she says. If this were the case, the improvement of a patient after vaccination would be permanent.

The results could also support the idea that the long Covid may be caused by an autoimmune reaction, says Dr Iwasaki. In this case, vaccination can temporarily reduce the secretion of toxic cytokines, a type of protein, providing patients with temporary relief.

Previously, surveys by long groups of Covid patients have found that some people feel better or report fewer symptoms after being vaccinated. And a small preliminary study of 44 vaccinated patients in the UK found a small improvement in symptoms compared to 22 unvaccinated long Covid patients, as well as a decrease in worsening of symptoms and an increase in symptom resolution.

Dr Iwasaki is conducting his own study on the effect of vaccination on long Covid patients, and expects to have preliminary results in a few months.

David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, has more than 400 long-time Covid patients in a rehabilitation program. About half said they felt better after being vaccinated, while the other half said they felt the same or worse. He thinks the French study is “convincing” in its conclusion that “the vaccine modulates symptoms,” he says, but thinks it’s important to better understand why some people feel better and others don’t.

Daniel Griffin, head of the infectious disease division for ProHealth NY in New Hyde Park, NY, says about 60% of long Covid patients in the network report feeling better after being vaccinated.

Two patients he has treated for a long time Covid, Carol and Edward Alexander, had different responses after being vaccinated. Three weeks after her second stroke, “for the first time in over a year, I haven’t had a sore throat or headache,” says Ms. Alexander, a 65-year-old publisher and poet who lives with her. husband in Manhattan. . Still, her husband felt worse for a while, then finally reverted to how he felt before he got the shot.

“What we generally see is improvement, but not full recovery,” says Dr. Griffin. “So now I can smell again. Now I can go up that staircase again. I can go back to work but still have to lie down when I get home.

Write to Sumathi Reddy at [email protected]