A study demonstrates the presence of an active viral reservoir in the bodies of patients who present symptoms months after their contamination.
A great hope for people with long Covid. And for a more reliable future diagnosis….
Researchers from Harvard Medical School have demonstrated the presence of coronavirus proteins in the sang of patients who present with Covid long up to one year after their contamination.
And the protein in question was not detected in the blood of people who did not have persistent symptoms, as reported The Guardian.
Patients with long Covid therefore have still virus present in their body.
Those are the very convincing results of this small study conducted on 63 people which were published on June 16 in medRxiv.
Scientists have therefore hypothesized that reservoirs of the virus were bound to persist so that it is still present in the blood.
Hidden pockets containing an active virus reservoir are inevitably found in the body.
And for them, they could be in the gut.
The presence of the virus in the stools of children
Why the intestine? Because the authors used previous research, in particular that published in Critical Care Explorations which reported the presence of the genetic material of the virus in the stools of children affected by PIMS, a pediatric multi-systemic inflammatory syndrome that begins weeks after contamination.
When the latter were treated with a treatment that reduced the permeability of the intestinal walls, the symptoms faded and even disappeared.
Similarity in adults?
So this functioning could be similar in adults. Moreover, other research, published in Cell on June 10, showed that genetic material of the virus had been detected in the feces of patients, adults this time, weeks and months after the contamination.
The latter had reported abdominal pain and gastrointestinal problems.
The Stanford University researchers explain that their “work presents compelling evidence of virus infection in the digestive tract and suggest a possible role for long-term infection in syndromes such as long Covid.”
Other research, published in National Library of Medecineon May 1, concluded that the persistence of the Covid antigen in the intestine in particular was a factor in the long Covid syndrome.
Scientists hope that these discoveries can make it possible to launch broader research and clinical trials to study this viral persistence and make it easier to diagnose long Covid and treat it…