New studies in Israel and Britain suggest COVID-19 vaccines can reduce the risk of people suffering from “long COVID.”
Preliminary results of a study in Israel – which has not been peer reviewed – show that people who received the two-dose Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and tested positive for the virus were much less likely to report any lingering symptoms than people who were unvaccinated when they were infected.
In Britain, an observational study of 6,000 adults conducted by the Office for National Statistics revealed that those who were double-vaccinated were 41% less likely to report COVID-19 symptoms three months after testing positive. The study said that, overall, only 9.5% of the double-vaccinated group experienced “long COVID,” compared to nearly 15% of a similar group who were unvaccinated.
Two separate studies released earlier this week revealed who may be most susceptible to “long COVID.”
Scientists at several U.S.-based research centers, including the University of Washington and the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, studied more than 200 patients who were infected in 2020 and 2021. They discovered four factors that may increase the chances of “long COVID,” including how much of the coronavirus is in a person’s system, the presence of certain antibodies that mistakenly attack the body’s healthy tissues, a reactivation of a common human virus that triggers mononucleosis, and the presence of Type 2 diabetes.
Meanwhile, researchers at University Hospital Zurich discovered that low levels of certain antibodies were more common in coronavirus patients who went on to develop “long COVID.” Both studies concluded that treating “long COVID” patients with antiviral medications could help in alleviating its debilitating symptoms, such as fatigue and “brain fog,” which involves the inability to focus, and memory loss.
