Long-haul carriers report softening symptoms after receiving a shot

Sheri Paulson had trouble getting out of bed months after her diagnosis of Covid-19.

The 53-year-old North Dakota resident and her family fell ill with the disease after attending a wedding in August. Paulson, an endurance athlete who runs a farm outside Fargo, would later suffer from fatigue, brain fog and a high heart rate that led doctors to advise him to stop exercising and attend cardiac rehabilitation.

It wasn’t until about five days after receiving the first shot from Pfizer in February that he started to feel better.

“Suddenly, I was no longer taking naps after cardiac rehabilitation,” said Paulson, who also suffers from multiple sclerosis. “And then I started walking with my dog. Then I said, ‘hm, I think I’m going to run a little too.’

Some people who have experienced persistent and often debilitating symptoms months after their first attack with the virus now say they find relief after getting vaccinated, baffling doctors and other health experts. Survivor Corps, a patient advocacy group for people with the so-called long Covid, recently surveyed nearly 900 of its members and found that 41% of them reported a slight relief from the total recovery little after receiving the shots.

The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 1 in 10 patients with Covid-19 experience persistent illness 12 weeks after contracting the virus. Researchers at the University of Washington released data in February that found a third of patients reported ongoing symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath and sleep disorders, which persisted for up to nine months.

Symptoms of long covid, which researchers now call post-acute sequelae of covid-19 or PASC, can develop well after the initial infection, and the severity can range from mild to disabling, according to public health officials and experts. in health.

One of the world’s largest studies published in early January found that many people who suffer from ongoing illnesses after infection cannot return to full-time work six months later. The study surveyed more than 3,700 people between the ages of 18 and 80 from 56 countries.

Diana Berrent, who founded the Survivor Corps just over a year ago, suffered for months a long Covid before most of her symptoms resolved on their own last year. He said some members of the organization at first hesitated to get vaccinated. Members feared, according to Berrent, that the side effects reported by the shots would worsen their symptoms.

“We really expected the worst” of the vaccines, he told CNBC in a telephone interview. “You could have knocked me down with a pen when I found out some people were starting to get better, because it was just outside of what we expected.”

They are not alone. Facebook and Twitter are full of stories of people testifying, to their surprise, that their symptoms diminished or even disappeared after receiving a vaccine against Covid-19.

Immunologists and other health experts still do not fully understand the cause of persistent symptoms.

Most studies have focused on people with serious or fatal illnesses, not on those people who have recovered, but who still have persistent side effects, the so-called long-term ones. The virus is also relatively new, discovered just over a year ago, so there is no long-term data.

The National Institutes of Health launched an initiative in February to study Covid Long and identify the causes and possible treatments for people. The director of NIH, Dr. Francis Collins said at the time that researchers hope to understand the underlying biological cause of the prolonged symptoms.

Doctors also don’t know why some patients with long covid say they feel better after being immunized. Finding out, experts say, could provide new insights into what’s behind the persistent symptoms, as well as possible new treatments to combat it.

One theory, according to Yale immunologist Akiko Iwasaki, is that vaccines help eliminate the so-called “viral deposit,” where the virus can still persist in the body and cause chronic symptoms. The robust vaccine-induced immune response can help eliminate any excess virus, eliminating symptoms, said the scientist, who has been studying Covid for a long time.

“This is probably the easiest way” vaccines could help people, he told CNBC in a telephone interview. “If that’s the case, people will be cured of the long Covid and that’s going to be wonderful news.”

Iwasaki also raised the hypothesis that Covid could be causing an autoimmune disease where immune cells mistakenly damage the body. If that is the case, the vaccines could provide “temporary relief” of symptoms and eventually patients would have to take another dose again, he said.

There is no long-term data on how people feel after the vaccine, he said. “But I suspect that if the second [hypothesis] true, then it will not be a lasting relief. “

Darren Brown, a 37-year-old physiotherapist based in the UK, said his symptoms returned a few weeks after receiving the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

Brown suffered from fatigue, restless sleep, and impaired coordination for several months. He said he felt his long symptoms of Covid had completely increased about three weeks after receiving the first shot. But a few days before his second dose, he felt his symptoms begin to return.

“I started to notice that I was getting more tired again,” he said. “The level I thought I had been able to push myself, the threshold, seemed to have dropped and I would have nothing on me after going back to work. I just had to go to bed after a day of work “.

He feels better from the second dose, but said he worries that the symptoms will reappear.

“I’m really cautious so this doesn’t last long,” he said. “But I’m also really overwhelmed by the excitement that’s rising for now.”

Paulson, a North Dakota farmer, said she still has some symptoms, but fatigue and brain fog have disappeared since she received her second shot on March 18. She added that she is grateful to have done well, especially because many others died from the disease. .

“There are always things that put your life in perspective and get you back on your feet a little bit,” said Paulson, who also works for a Massachusetts-based biotech company.

While reports of relief from Covid’s long-term symptoms may be good news, they are still only anecdotal, said Dr. Paul Offit, a voting member of the FDA’s Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Organic Products.

There still needs to be a formal trial to determine if the vaccines are really helping, he said.

Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto, echoed Offit’s statements, saying he is skeptical but “open-minded.”

“This is a question that can be answered and I hope we have decent data that can confirm or refute it,” Bogoch said. “Otherwise, they’re just a bunch of collective anecdotes”

Iwasaki told CNBC that he plans to conduct a study, in collaboration with Survivor Corps, that would analyze blood samples from long Covid patients before and after vaccination. He said he hopes they can explain the relief some patients experience after vaccination.

The study is still in the planning phase, he said, adding, “We are working very hard to get it up and running.”

“I’ve received numerous emails and DMs on Twitter about patients’ experiences … and every day I hear from people who feel better about getting the vaccine, ”he said. “From where I am, it seems encouraging.”

–Noah Higgins-Dunn of CNBC contributed to this report.