A new study reports the case of a 71-year-old woman, infected with SARS-CoV-2 for several months, while remaining asymptomatic. Unusual, his case could however help to better understand the mechanism of the new coronavirus, believe the authors of the work.
- The 71-year-old patient has cancer of the white blood cells whose immunosuppressive treatments that weaken her immune system could explain the duration of her contagiousness.
- Persistent infection and prolonged shedding of SARS-CoV-2 is occurring with increasing frequency.
70 days. This is the longest duration of SARS-CoV-2 infection recorded to date. The patient concerned would have developed an asymptomatic form of the disease. Scientists from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (United States) who followed the case of this woman describe their work in the journal Cell.
The patient in question was diagnosed positive for Covid-19 in March 2020. Aged 71, the latter had also suffered from cancer of the white blood cells for ten years. Followed by doctors, the patient was repeatedly subjected to PCR tests, as well as throat swabs.
In total, more than a dozen positive diagnostic tests have been reported, which means that the woman has retained SARS-CoV-2 particles in her body for several months. The septuagenarian also benefited from the treatment track consisting in using the plasma of patients cured of Covid-19, in order to provide antibodies to the sick. The virus finally disappeared from his body last June.
Better assess the risks in immunocompromised patients
The case of this woman could be linked to her cancer and to immunosuppressive treatments, which weaken the immune system. This data is all the more worrying as so-called “immunocompromised” patients go far beyond the specific case of cancer and applies to other drug treatments than chemotherapy, as well as to infections such as HIV.
After a test carried out in the laboratory on the viral particles from the patient’s body, the scientists were able to observe that these pieces of virus were capable of replicating and contaminating other human organisms. In other words, the patient remained contagious throughout the time that her body showed traces of Covid-19.
“Understanding the mechanism of virus persistence and eventual clearance will be key to providing appropriate treatment and preventing transmission of SARS-CoV-2, as persistent infection and prolonged shedding of SARS-CoV-2 increasingly occurs. more frequently”warn the authors of the study, while insisting on the need for further research in this direction.
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