Can vaccines help with long COVID?
In this video, Roger Seheult, MD of MedCram analyzes a preprint study from Nature on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccination of patients with long COVID symptoms. He notes he has personally been encountering more patients with long COVID symptoms in his clinic.
The study involves a cohort of patients from France that are followed longitudinally. To be included in the cohort, patients needed to have at least 3 months of a minimum of one symptom. The intervention was a dose of any vaccine that was available in France at the time of the study. Researchers monitored symptoms with a questionnaire at 60 and 120 days. The endpoint was to see what percent of the cohort was free of any long COVID symptoms at the end of the study. In the vaccinated intervention group it was 16.6% and the unvaccinated control was 7.5% for an absolute reduction of 9.1%. This was statistically significant.
Limitations to the study include lack of randomization and timing of onset to the match controls.
Dr. Seheult theorizes that the subgroup of patients with long COVID may have subpar immune systems that could be allowing the virus to hide in a reservoir and prevent the immune system from eradicating the remnants of the infection. Please watch the Medcram video showing a case report of this.
LINKS / REFERENCES:
Vitamin D and Long COVID (MedCram) | https://youtu.be/NZ4rZaMMN7I
Efficacy of COVID-19 vaccination on the symptoms of patients with long COVID: a target trial emulation using data from the ComPaRe e-cohort in France (Nature) | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3932953
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