{"id":4255,"date":"2022-04-23T14:06:16","date_gmt":"2022-04-23T14:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=4255"},"modified":"2022-04-23T14:06:16","modified_gmt":"2022-04-23T14:06:16","slug":"longest-covid-infection-lasted-more-than-16-months-tests-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=4255","title":{"rendered":"Longest Covid infection lasted more than 16 months, tests show"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Authors: Michelle Roberts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

UK doctors believe they have documented the longest Covid infection on record – a patient they treated who had detectable levels of the virus for more than 16 months, or 505 days, in total.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unnamed individual had other underlying medical conditions and died in hospital in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Persistent infections such as this are still rare, say the London medics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people naturally clear the virus, but the patient in question had a severely weakened immune system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chronic infections like these need studying to improve our understanding of Covid and the risks it can pose, say experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The patient first caught Covid in early 2020. They had symptoms and the infection was confirmed with a PCR test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were in and out of hospital many times over the next 72 weeks, for both routine checks and care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On each occasion – about 50 in all – they tested positive, meaning they still had Covid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The doctors, from King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, say detailed lab analysis revealed it was the same, persistent infection, rather than repeated bouts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The patient could not shake the infection, even after being given antiviral drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is different to “long Covid”, where symptoms persist after the infection has gone<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the medics who will be presenting the findings at a medical conference – the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases – is Dr Luke Blagdon Snell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told the BBC: “These were throat swab tests that were positive each time. The patient never had a negative test. And we can tell it was one continuous infection because the genetic signature of it – the information we got from sequencing the viral genome – was unique and constant in that patient.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prolonged infections are rare but important, say the researchers, because they might give rise to new variants of Covid – although that did not happen in this case, or other ones that they studied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Snell said: “The virus is still adapting to the human host when people are infected for a long time. It might provide an opportunity for Covid to accrue new mutations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Some of these patients that we have studied have mutations that have been seen in some of the variants of concern.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stressed that none of the nine patients they checked had spawned a new dangerous variant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone with a chronic infection might not be contagious to others, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr David Strain from the University of Exeter Medical School, said: “We know that every time the virus replicates, it must reproduce its RNA – equivalent to manually copying a text book. We know if we were to transcribe an entire book we would make mistakes, so too does the virus. Every copy will produce mutations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Although Omicron did not arise in these particular individuals, this demonstrates a very clear pathway by which vaccine resistant variants may arise. Whereas with BA.2 we have got lucky, that the mutation is associated with a less severe illness, there is no guarantee that the next iteration will be the same.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authors: Michelle Roberts UK doctors believe they have documented the longest Covid infection on record – a patient they treated who had detectable levels of the virus for more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[289,290],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-long-haul-disease","category-long-term-effects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}