Close-up of a male patient’s hand in a hospital bed with an oximeter. Elderly man hospitalized.
After 13 months of long Covid, an Englishman has been cured thanks to a combination of antibodies. Researchers had to comb through his virus to find out how to cure it.
A very long Covid. A 59-year-old English patient who contracted the disease in December 2020 tested positive 411 days, or 13 months, before doctors were able to treat him. British researchers from Guy’s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London described this clinical case in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Scientists performed rapid genetic analysis using nanopore sequencing technology to determine whether the patient, whose immune system was weakened by a kidney transplant, had had multiple infections with Covid-19 or had an ongoing infection.
A new way of treatment
The results confirmed the infection. To treat the man, the doctors used a combination of Regeneron’s monoclonal antibodies Casirivimab and Imdevimab, which are now considered ineffective. “The new variants […] are resistant to all antibodies available in the UK, EU and even the US,” notes Luke Blagdon Snell, infectious disease specialist at the UK Public Health Service’s Guy and St Thomas Foundation. The success of the treatment is linked to the fact that the patient was infected with an old mutation of the coronavirus.
The results weren’t as conclusive in another 60-year-old patient who had been positive for him since April. In the latter case, the team mixed two previously uncombined antiviral treatments (Paxlovid and Remdesivir) and administered them to the unconscious patient through a nasogastric tube. The treatment lasted twice as long as normally recommended and the Covid infection eventually disappeared. This second study has not yet been peer-reviewed but offers hope for a new treatment option for patients with ongoing and severe Covid.
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