According to a new study, an overactive inflammatory response may be at the root of many prolonged Covid cases. Scientists at the Allen Institute and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in the US, looking at proteins circulating in the blood, found a set of molecules associated with inflammation that were present only in a subgroup of patients with chronic COVID and were not seen in people who had not recovered from their disease. Recovered.
Nearly two-thirds of the 55 patients with long COVID had persistently high levels of some marker of inflammation. The scientists also looked at blood samples from 25 people who had Covid but recovered, and from 25 volunteers who had never had Covid to their knowledge. People who did not have Kovid for a long time did not show similar signs of inflammation in their blood.
Scientists have seen previous links between inflammation and prolonged Covid, but the new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, is the first to explore the persistence of these inflammatory markers over time in the same patients. There’s an obvious implication for these findings, said Troy Torgerson, director of experimental immunology at the Allen Institute for Immunology.
Some types of anti-inflammatory drugs can reduce the symptoms of some chronic Covid patients. But clinicians need a way to tell which treatments may benefit Covid patients for how long. “The big question was, can we define which long-term Covid patients have persistent inflammation versus those who don’t? This would be useful in the context of clinical trial planning and help clinicians decide for their patients. would be useful in terms of helping to figure out targeted therapies,” Torgerson said.
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Notably, the blood markers highlighted in this subset of patients with “inflammatory long Covid,” as the scientists call it, pointed to a flavor of inflammation similar to that seen in autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. This type of inflammation can be treated with an existing class of drugs called JAK inhibitors, at least in the case of rheumatoid arthritis (this has not yet been tested for long term with Covid).
The scientists also hope to narrow down their molecular signature of “inflammatory long COVID” to a few markers that can be used to differentiate this subset of COVID patients with longer stays in the clinic from the rest .