A preliminary study would indicate a unique case of its kind: in the United States an immuno-compromised 47-year-old has had positive molecular tests for coronavirus for over ten months
Have theSars-cov-2 infection for nearly a year. It sounds like a nightmare, but it’s true: in the United States a 47-year-old woman, in remission from a lymphoma e immune-compromised, it turned out positive for coronavirus for at least 335 days. It would be the longer case of Covid-19 never documented so far. This is what emerges from a study, published in pre-print on MedRxiv and not yet undergoing the peer review process, conducted by physicians on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, United States. After ten months of infection, the woman would have definitively defeated Sars-cov-2 last April.
The risks for immuno-compromised people
The immune system is crucial to counteract the symptoms of the disease and to eliminate Sars-cov-2 infection. It seems obvious, but things change when it comes to immune-compromised people, that is, those whose immune systems are not functioning as they should due to illness or medical treatment. For example, those who fall ill with cancers of the lymphatic system receive specific treatments that lead to reduction or elimination of immune system cells.
In particular, those who receive therapy directed against B lymphocytes (the cells that have the task of produce antibodies and which help the immune system to function normally), if it becomes infected with a virus such as Sars-cov-2, can develop a very prolonged illness and viral infection.
If in most patients the virus is not detected beyond 9 days from the onset of the disease (while the remains of the genetic material can persist in the cells even for weeks or a few months), several studies have shown that in immune-compromised patients both here I’m Sars-cov-2 in the vital form also different months after the initial infection, presumably due to the poor ability of lymphocytes to clear the infection.
Almost a year with Covid-19
This is what happened to the protagonist of the study: the woman three years earlier she was cured of lymphoma thanks to the rather invasive treatments they had left her with low levels of B lymphocytes and therefore immuno-compromised. In March 2020 she tested positive for Sars-cov-2 and, showing typical symptoms of Covid-19, was admitted to the US National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. When the symptoms improved, the woman was discharged from the hospital.
But there was a problem: and tampons, even after months, they were always positive. At first the team of doctors who treated her thought it was non-viable Sars-cov-2 fragments. But then, in March 2021, the patient’s symptoms worsened, and it was again hospitalized. At this point, the genetic sequences of the virus from the first and second hospitalizations were compared, with a surprising result: the virus was the same as in March 2020, which meant that it was not a reinfection, but apersistent infection of nearly a year.
Subsequent swabs allowed the team to understand how the virus evolved while the patient’s immune system, although weakened, fought it. In addition, the study showed a unique case of the duration of an active infection. “I’ve never heard of a transplant patient (and therefore immuno-compromised, ed) with the flu for a year“, Stated Veronique Nussenblatt, first author of the study, a Science News: “That’s a really long time.“After 335 days and a second hospitalization, la woman eventually defeated the infection and now it is negative in several molecular tests.
Studies like this one, which must undergo the peer review process anyway, don’t just provide information on Sars-cov-2 infection in people with weakened immune systems, but they are important for understand the possible mechanisms of emergence of new variants. For example, in the patient in the study, the doctors found two major modifications of the Sars-cov-2 genome, one in particular involving the proteina spike, which drives access into human cells.