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The elderly community says that 99 percent of its residents received the COVID-19 vaccine.
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Vaccination can offer a glimpse of hope for people who still experience symptoms weeks or months after recovery from COVID-19.
Somewhere between about 10% and 30% of people who take COVID-19 end up with long-term symptoms colloquially referred to as long-distance COVID or long-distance COVID. Although most people with persistent problems have had a bad period with the disease, some have almost no symptoms at all.
A new theory is emerging, albeit still preliminary, that getting a COVID-19 vaccine could help some of these suffering people.
In a survey of almost 600 people who reported persistent symptoms after COVID-19, 47% saw no difference after vaccination, 39% improved after receiving the vaccine and 14% felt worse. The research was carried out by Survivor Corps, a grassroots group of people with long-term COVID-19.
The most common persistent symptom was fatigue, reported by almost everyone and lasted 100 days or more. Other frequent long-term symptoms include shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, difficulty concentrating, inability to exercise or to be active, diarrhea, headache and loss of smell and / or taste.
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It is biologically plausible that vaccination could help treat some of these symptoms, said Akiko Iwasaki, professor of epidemiology and immunobiology at Yale, who developed the theory.
It may be that their bodies still harbor particles or fragments of the virus that causes COVID-19. The vaccine could theoretically stimulate your immune system to hunt for these remaining pieces and eliminate them so they can no longer cause inflammation.
“We know that the vaccine produces very robust antibodies that can bind to the virus and viral remnants and eliminate them,” she said.
Iwasaki said it would be great if it worked, because it would make vaccination a “cure” for many people with persistent symptoms. “Get rid of the source and go.”
But that is probably not the complete answer.
It may also be that, in some people, a COVID-19 infection has overloaded the immune system. For them, a vaccine can provide only temporary relief, mitigating this overreaction while the vaccine is circulating in the body, but not addressing the underlying problem.
But even in this case, knowing that would be important, said Iwasaki, because it would suggest that treatment to lessen an exaggerated immune reaction could be useful.
“We really need to study your immune system,” she said.
Researchers plan a trial to identify ‘the first and only treatment for long COVID’
Iwasaki and several colleagues are organizing a large prospective study to see if vaccination eliminates some people’s symptoms – either in the short term or forever.
“I think this is especially important because it can not only represent the first and only treatment for a long COVID, but it can help us understand the mechanism in the people it helps,” said Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, which is collaborating on the research.
The group applied for federal funding to support the trial.
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University, said she thinks the Iwasaki hypothesis makes sense and is looking forward to research to show if she is right.
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“It would be a great achievement if something that all of us should do anyway would really solve this problem,” said Rasmussen of the vaccination. “I would be the most pleasantly surprised person in the world that was so easy … It may not be that simple, but I really hope it is.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, considered America’s leading infectious disease specialist, said at a meeting of the Congressional subcommittee on Wednesday that the National Institutes of Health considers these persistent symptoms to be a major public health problem and has allocated more than US $ 1 billion to study the long COVID.
He said that a big test is essential to ensure that vaccination should really get credit for these improvements, rather than just the passage of time, which makes a difference for most people.
Fauci described two types of suffering patients: those who had a severe attack with the disease that left them with permanent damage to the heart, lungs or liver, which are difficult to resolve with vaccination; and those who did not suffer so much at first, but have struggled to get rid of physical symptoms in the months ahead.
Brent Boschetti battled COVID-19 for months: ‘I just wasn’t coming back’
Brent Boschetti, 44, from Los Angeles, falls into the second category.
Boschetti, a medical sales representative and exercise enthusiast, picked up the COVID-19 on March 10, 2020, before blocking or wearing a mask was recommended. By March 15, he had lost his sense of smell and taste, and by April he was having heart palpitations, severe migraines, difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle and joint pain.
“I was practically in bed until May,” said Boschetti.
He finally tested negative for the virus and was ready to return to his six-day-a-week training routines and daily runs. But his body was not.
“The energy was not there,” he said. “I just wasn’t coming back.”
Each time he tried, he rekindled his symptoms and went back to bed for several days.
He managed to keep up with the work that Zoom called, but he spent much of the summer traveling among specialists: a rheumatologist, cardiologist, immunologist, gastroenterologist. He started weekly acupuncture sessions and joined Survivor Corps for moral support.
In November, he was feeling much better. “People would say, ‘How do you feel, and I would say 90%.’ I just didn’t feel completely myself, “said Boschetti.
He made an appointment for a vaccine in early February, although he was nervous about the possibility of his symptoms reappearing.
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But within a day, he felt like before. His energy was back to 100. “It was like something had just been cleaned up, whatever was taking me,” said Boschetti.
He felt very good for three weeks and anxiously approached the second dose, wondering if it would undo all the benefits of the first. In the early days, it looked like this. All the symptoms of your original infection have returned.
Then, slowly, they all disappeared.
“I realized now that it has decreased,” said Boschetti. “I have all my energy back. I ran about five miles yesterday and have been working as I always used to.”
Please contact Karen Weintraub at [email protected].
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