British researchers announced Friday that they cured a man who frequently contracted covid for 411 days by analyzing the genetic code of his specific virus to find the right treatment.
Persistent covid infection, which is another of the long episodes of covid or repeated episodes of the disease, occurs in a small number of patients whose immune system is already weakened.
These patients can test positive for months or even years, with the infection “rumbling all the time”, said Luke Snell, an infectious disease doctor at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
Infections can pose a serious risk because a portion of patients also have persistent symptoms such as lung inflammation, Snell told AFP, adding that much is still unknown about the disease.
In a news item published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, a team of researchers from Guy’s
The man, who has a weakened immune formula due to a kidney transplant, caught Covid in December 2020 and continued to test positive until January this year.
To find out if he had contracted Covid continuously or if it was a persistent infection, the researchers used immediate genetic research with nanopore sequencing technology.
The test, which can produce effects in as little as 24 hours, showed the man had an early B. 1 variant that dominated in late 2020, but has since been replaced by new strains.
Because he had this early variant, the researchers gave him one of Regeneron’s monoclonal antibodies casirivimab and imdevimab.
Like most other antibody remedies, the remedy is no longer used much because it is useless compared to newer variants like Omicron.
But he controlled curing the guy because he was battling a variant from an earlier phase of the pandemic.
resistant to treatment
“The new variants of the logo whose prevalence is now expanding are resistant to all antibodies found in the UK, the EU and now even the US,” Snell said.
Investigators used several of those remedies to try to save a 60-year-old man in critical condition in August of this year who had been inflamed since April.
However, none worked.
“We thought he was going to die,” Snell said.
The team then crushed two previously unused antiviral remedies in combination, Paxlovid and remdesivir, and administered them to the subconscious patient through a nasal tube, according to a preprinted, non-peer-reviewed study on the ResearchSquare website.
“Miraculously, it’s over and possibly now is the way to treat those very complicated persistent infections,” Snell said, noting that this remedy might not translate into overall covid cases.
At the ECCMID convention in April, the team announced the best-known persistent infection in a man who was tested for 505 days before his death.
This “very unfortunate case” occurred before the pandemic, Snell said, adding that he was grateful that there are now so many other treatment features available.