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Coronavirus: A 47-year-old immunosuppressed from the US had symptoms for 335 days

For 335 days, that is, for almost a whole year he had coronavirus symptoms a 47-year-old from the USA. The woman belongs to the category of immunosuppressed as in the past she had undergone successful anti-cancer treatment for lymphoma.

The 47-year-old woman is according to scientists the longest case of Covid-19 that has been recorded so far internationally.

The researchers, led by Infectious Diseases Specialist Dr. Veronica Nussenblatt of the Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology of the US National Institutes of Health, who made the relevant publication in medRxiv, according to “Science”, reported that such a prolonged infection turned the patient’s body into a “laboratory” of mutations. Among other things, they found in the patient an unusual mutation beyond the virus’s protein.

He contracted coronavirus and was hospitalized in the spring of 2020

The patient had initially fallen ill and needed to be hospitalized in the spring of 2020. But instead of recovering along the way, even as the months passed, she continued to need oxygen at home, as she continued to have shortness of breath and coughing. Sometimes it felt better and other times worse.

Consecutive Covid-19 tests showed that it was positive for the coronavirus, although marginally. Her adventure, which lasted almost a year, was a unique case study of how long a Covid-19 infection can last and how the virus can develop in a patient’s body.

The woman had successfully undergone aggressive anticancer immunotherapy (CART-T cell) three years ago for her lymphoma, which left her with very few B immune cells and, as a result, her immune system was not working properly. The patient was then infected by one of the original strains of the coronavirus, which by the beginning of 2021 was no longer in circulation.

He had to be hospitalized a second time

After all, after a second hospitalization and further treatment with remedesivir and blood plasma of the patients, her lungs improved and the inflammation subsided. Subsequent Covid-19 tests were negative and her symptoms had significantly subsided, leading Dr. Nussenblatt to believe that the infection had cleared up.

The researchers concluded that treatments that lead to B cell depletion could lead to prolonged Covid-19 disease and thus facilitate the development and mutation of the coronavirus.

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