PARIS: British researchers announced on Friday that they have cured a man who had been infected with Covid-19 for 411 days by analyzing the genetic code of his particular virus to find the right treatment.
Persistent COVID infection – which is different. Prolonged COVID or recurrent disease – occurs in a small number of patients with already weakened immune systems.
Dr Luke Snell, an infectious disease specialist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, said these patients could test positive with the infection for months or years.
Infections can pose a serious threat because about half of patients also have persistent symptoms such as pneumonia, Snell said. AFP“A lot is unknown about the condition,” he added.
In a new study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, a team of researchers from Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London described how a 59-year-old man finally recovered after more than 13 months. Carr overcame his infection.
A man with a weakened immune system due to a kidney transplant contracted Covid in December 2020 and tested positive by January this year.
To discover whether he had contracted Covid multiple times or if it was a persistent infection, the researchers used rapid genetic analysis with nanopore sequencing technology.
The test, which can provide results in less than 24 hours, shows the person originally had the B.1 strain that was dominant in late 2020 but has since been replaced by a new strain. Is.
Because he had this early form, the researchers gave him a combination of the monoclonal antibodies cacerumab and imdivumab from Regeneron.
As with most other antibody treatments, this treatment is no longer widely used because it is ineffective against newer types such as Omicron.
But he successfully treated the man as he was battling various conditions from the first stage of the epidemic.
Resistant to treatment
“A lot of the new strains that are spreading now are resistant to all the antibodies that are available in the UK, the EU and now even the US,” Snell said.
Researchers used several such treatments in August this year to try to save a critically ill 60-year-old man who had been infected since April.
However, nothing worked.
“We really thought he was going to die,” Snell said.
So the team whipped up two antiviral treatments that hadn’t been used together before — paxlovid and remdesivir — and administered them to an anesthetized patient through a nasal tube, according to a non-peer-reviewed pre-clinical study on the website Research Square. According to the print study.
“Miraculously it cleared up and maybe now that’s the way we treat these very difficult persistent infections,” Snell said, stressing that the treatment may not be routine. COVID Cases
At the ECCMID conference in April, the team announced the longest continuous infection in a person who tested positive for 505 days before his death.
Sunil said this “very sad case” came early in the pandemic, adding that he was grateful that so many treatment options were now available.