Daniel Griffin was not sure what to expect when he started vaccinating patients with chronic COVID-19 symptoms. There were concerns that the shots would make things worse by activating the immune system. Fortunately, the opposite seemed true.
“I started getting text messages from my colleagues saying, ‘hey, are you reporting patients with a long COVID that they feel better after the vaccination?’ says Griffin, a clinician and researcher at the University of Columbia on Infectious Diseases. When he started talking to patients, he saw that it was so. “It’s not 100 percent, but it looks like it’s about a third,” he says.
Early reports from Griffin and others suggest that people with persistent symptoms may improve after being vaccinated. Information is still limited, and the data is largely anecdotal – but if the pattern holds, it could help researchers understand more why COVID-19 symptoms persist in some people, and provide a path to relief.
Many of Griffin’s patients who improved had significant side effects after their first ingestion of the vaccine Moderna or Pfizer / BioNTech. This is common in people who have had COVID-19 already – they already have some antibodies, so the first recording works more like a second amplifier. Then she began to report patients with chronic symptoms that their sense of smell was improving or that they were not so tired. “For some of them, it was short-lived. But for a bunch, it actually continued – they went on, took out their second shot and said, ‘wow, they really feel like there’s light at the end of the tunnel,’ ‘Griffin said.
Some people who catch COVID-19 experience symptoms months after their initial illness – such as fatigue, shortness of breath or loss of smell. For some, these symptoms are debilitating. Many people who fell ill during the first wave of the pandemic a year ago have not yet fully recovered. Doctors like Griffin are learning more about what is called ‘long COVID’, but answers are still limited. A hint of a path to enlightenment ‘would be nothing short of a miracle’, says Diana Berrent, founder of the COVID-19 group Survivor Corps.
Some patient admissions attempt to read early on how widespread improvement is. Director Gez Medinger, who covers long COVID on his YouTube channel, interviewed nearly 500 people in various long-term support groups on Facebook. About a third of the people surveyed said they felt slightly or completely better when they were out of the vaccination for at least two weeks.
Dozens of people who responded to a survey in the Facebook group for Survivor Corps said that their symptoms improved slightly or almost disappeared. “We were really worried that people would get bad reaction. It never occurred to us that they would improve, ”says Berrent. Another group of survivors, Patient-Led Research, is also examining people with a long COVID who have been vaccinated.
There are restrictions on this type of survey – it is small and limited to people seeking and participating in support groups. They cannot prove that the vaccine led to the improvement of the symptom. But they can point researchers to useful research questions.
Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University, says there are probably biological reasons why vaccination can help people with long COVID. Scientists still do not know for sure why some people have chronic symptoms, but one theory is that the virus or fragments of the virus are stuck in their body. It is not contagious, but the remnants irritate the immune system. Vaccination can eliminate those. “Potentially the remains are removed because you are building up a lot of antibodies,” Iwasaki said. The edge.
Another theory is that COVID-19 causes long-term changes in the immune system for some people, and that it can turn on healthy cells and tissues. In such a case, the vaccine can help by shaking the immune system. “It could fix some of the existing answers,” Iwasaki says. In that case, the improvement of the symptom is likely to be short-lived and just as long-lasting as the kicking of the vaccine does.
There is much more to learn about the link between long COVID and vaccinations. It will require more and more careful surveys to understand exactly what part of the people feel better after being vaccinated. There are studies underway that monitor certain inflammatory proteins in the blood of people with chronic symptoms, and researchers can compare levels in people who are and are not vaccinated, Griffin says.
Research should also look at whether one type of vaccine is more effective at reducing chronic symptoms than the other. Although the Moderna, Pfizer / BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson vaccines work equally well to prevent serious infections, they may differ in how well they can help people with long COVID. “Once we know that, we can recommend among COVID people to take different vaccines,” says Iwasaki.
This data will also help clarify the reasons why people have chronic symptoms. If a significant number of people improve in the long run after being vaccinated, Iwasaki says she will tend towards the theory of viral remnants. “Therefore, once you get rid of the virus, this is it – you no longer suffer from it.” However, she notes that everyone has different experiences with the disease. “It’s not one size fits all.”
Berrent still thinks it’s too early to say for sure how many vaccines can help people with a long COVID. “I think it’s very interesting,” she says. “I feel like we’re still collecting data here.” However, it is encouraging to see that they have not bad reactions to the vaccine, and any slight improvement is exciting.
The early reports are good pressure for people with chronic COVID-19 symptoms to be vaccinated, Griffin says. “It does not look harmful, and it can be therapeutic. I think it is encouraging for people with a long COVID to sign up as soon as possible. ‘