A new study revealed that a cancer survivor had the coronavirus for at most 335 days in the longest documented case of COVID-19.
These findings were published on MedRxiv as a preprint earlier in the month. The findings have not been peer-reviewed.
Science News reported that the 47-year old patient was initially hospitalized in spring 2020 with COVID-19 at Bethesda's National Institutes of Health campus.
Her doctors discovered that she had tested positive for the virus after ten months of mild to no symptoms.
According to the study, she was immunocompromised from a successful three-year-old blood cancer treatment that left her with low levels B cells. These cells produce antibodies.
According to the study, she continued to test positive for coronavirus. Her doctors believed that these were false positives, picking up harmless bits of virus after the infection had been cleared.
The doctors sequenced the genome of the patient's virus load, which rose again in March. The study found that the virus was identical to the coronavirus she had ten months prior and was unique among all strains circulating at the time.
According to the study, she received treatment and was finally freed from the infection in April. This happened 335 days after her first test. Science News reported that she has had several negative COVID-19 test results.
This study provides information on COVID-19 infection in people with a weak immune system.
People with compromised immune systems are less likely than others to respond to COVID-19 after two doses. This makes them more susceptible to infection.
In August, the US regulatory agencies approved a third dose vaccine for immunocompromised patients in the hope that it would boost their immune response.
These studies help scientists to understand the evolution of the virus. A study of a woman living with HIV that was tested for the coronavirus over 216 days showed that it had at least 30 mutations.
Business Insider originally published this article.
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