2023-09-13 12:13:03
The longer the Sars-CoV-2 infection lasts, the greater the risk of Long Covid. It is one of the elements that could pave the way for the post-virus syndrome and it was identified by an Italian study, published in the journal ‘Clinical Infectious Diseases’, and coordinated by Maria Rescigno, pro-rector of Humanitas University and head of the mucosal immunology laboratory and microbiota of Humanitas. The new results described emerge from the scientific work ‘Covid Care Program’, which has involved thousands of healthcare workers and employees of Humanitas and Humanitas University from 2020 to today. What emerged could also explain the ability of vaccines to protect against Long Covid.
Why do some people continue to have symptoms even weeks and months after the illness ends? In addition to the already known risk factors – including being female and suffering from allergies – the authors shine a light on the importance of the duration of the infection. The study was possible thanks to the collaboration of over 4,500 employees and healthcare workers of Humanitas hospitals, involved between March 2020 and April 2022 in the monitoring project, explain the IRCCS.
“Studying Long Covid is particularly complex – highlights Rescigno – not only due to the need to continuously follow people in the weeks and months after the end of the infection, but also due to the heterogeneity of its manifestations. It is no coincidence that the Long Covid is generically defined as the persistence of at least one symptom of Covid-19, including extreme tiredness, headache, cognitive fog, loss of smell and cardiovascular and respiratory system disorders, for at least 4 weeks from the first signs of infection”. On the role of vaccines, the new study confirms the evidence already found in the first scientific publication born from the Covid Care Program and which appeared in Jama in July 2022: being vaccinated with 3 doses “protects not only from serious forms of the disease, but also from Long Covid “. According to the data collected, out of 100 unvaccinated people 41 develop Long Covid, while among those vaccinated with three doses only 16 people out of every 100.
However, a fundamental question remained open in the 2022 study: why? The data published in Clinical Infectious Diseases provides a first answer: the probability of contracting Long Covid increases as the duration of positivity to Sars-CoV-2 increases: a duration which is substantially reduced in people protected by the vaccine.
The result allows us to hypothesize the protection mechanism of the vaccine, as also emerges from another recent study on Long Covid conducted in Humanitas by Marinos Kallikourdis and Gianluigi Condorelli and published in Circulation. “The vaccine protects against Long Covid because it reduces the duration of the infection – concludes Rescigno – If the virus is present within the body for less time, there is less risk that the immune and inflammatory response triggered by its presence will become chronic and gives rise to symptoms that persist even in the absence of the initial triggering agent”.
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