A female cancer survivor was infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus for almost a year, a study has found. This is the longest Covid-19 case ever reported.
A victim of coughing and shortness of breath, this 47-year-old woman was hospitalized for the first time with Covid-19 in the spring of 2020 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Maryland. This forced stay, which was initially supposed to last only a few days, finally extended into summer, autumn and then winter. This did not fail to disconcert Dr Véronique Nussenblatt, the hospital's infectious disease specialist.
In the end, this infection lasted 335 days, as evidenced by the repetition of positive tests accompanied by persistent symptoms, sometimes requiring home oxygen therapy.
According to the authors of a study published as a preprint on medRxivi, the levels of virus present in his body were barely detectable for months after his initial infection, before increase again in March 2021, analysis of the genomes of several samples collected confirmed that the virus was the same . In other words, this patient suffered one and the same infection .
Furthermore, it was not a long Covid (prolonged symptoms of Covid-19 after infection), since this patient was indeed still infected .
For doctors, this virus could have taken advantage of his weakened immune system. About three years ago, the patient had indeed been successfully treated with CAR T cell therapy to fight lymphoma, which would have depleted her body of most of the B cells that make antibodies.
The genetic analyzes made possible thanks to the samples collected have made it possible in particular to isolate two genetic deletions (mutations that erase parts of the genome), one of which is concentrated on genes coding for the protein spike, which the virus uses to invade human cells. Other studies had already reported this type of deletion in patients with chronic infections.
Infection cases in patients with compromised immune systems “give you a window into how the virus explores genetic space “, underlines to Science Magazine the main author of the study, Elodie Ghedin, molecular virologist at the NIH. “By analyzing samples from this patient and others with chronic infections, we will be able to see how the virus evolves ".
The patient finally cleared the virus and recorded several negative tests since April .
