Thought your bout of Covid was bad? Immunocompromised British man, 59, is finally cured after 411 DAYS of being infected
- The unidentified man had a weakened immune system after kidney transplant
- He tested positive in December 2020 with an early variant of the coronavirus
- He was then given a cocktail of neutralising antibodies known to clear virus
The longest surviving UK patient with Covid has finally been cured of the virus – some 411 days after first contracting it.
The man, who has a weakened immune system following a kidney transplant, finally beat the disease thanks to a cocktail of drugs.
Experts at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London, and King’s College London described how the man, now 59, was unable to get rid of an early variant of the virus.
The man, who has a weakened immune system following a kidney transplant, finally beat the disease thanks to a cocktail of drugs (stock)
Doctors detected the man’s ongoing infection by analysing the genetics of the strain of the virus he was carrying.
He was then given a cocktail of neutralising antibodies (Regeneron) known to be effective against early coronavirus variants, which finally allowed his body to get rid of Covid.
The research said the man originally tested positive in December 2020 and, although his symptoms went away, he continued to test positive intermittently until January 2022.
A previous patient treated by the same team tested positive for Covid for 505 days but subsequently died.
New variants of Covid has meant neutralising antibody treatments are now largely ineffective, according to findings published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Dr Luke Snell, from Guy’s & St Thomas’, said: ‘Some new variants of the virus are resistant to all the antibody treatments available in the UK and Europe.
‘Some people with weakened immune systems are still at risk of severe illness and becoming persistently infected.
‘We are still working to understand the best way to protect and treat them.’
Patients with weakened immune system have trouble recovering, meaning they harbour the virus for longer.
This can give the virus time to mutate inside their body, potentially leading to a new variant that can go on to infect others.
Some experts suspect this is what was behind the emergence of the super-mutated Omicron variant, which swept the world in late-2021.
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