Category: Corona Virus Vaccine

One German man has redefined man on a mission. A 62-year-old from Magdeburg deliberately got 217 COVID-19 vaccine shots in the span of 29 months, according to a new study, going against national vaccine recommendations. Thats an average of one jab every four days.

In the process, he became a walking experiment for what happens to the immune system when it is vaccinated against the same pathogen repeatedly. Acorrespondencepublished Monday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases outlined his case and concluded that while his hypervaccination did not result in any adverse health effects, it also did not significantly improve or worsen his immune response.

The man, who is not named in the correspondencein compliance with German privacy rules, reported receiving 217 COVID shots between June 2021 and November 2023. Of those, 134 were confirmed by a prosecutor and through vaccination centre documentation; the remaining 83 were self-reported, according to the study.

This is a really unusual case of someone receiving that many COVID vaccines, clearly not following any type of guidelines, said Dr. Emily Happy Miller, an assistant professor of medicine and of microbiology and immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who did not participate in the research.

The man did not report any vaccine-related side effects and has not had a COVID infection to date, as evidenced by repeated antigen and PCR testing between May 2022 and November 2023. The researchers caution that its not clear that his COVID status is directly because of his hypervaccination regimen.

Perhaps he didnt get COVID because he was well-protected in the first three doses of the vaccine, Miller said. We also dont know anything about his behaviours.

Dr. Kilian Schober, senior author of the new study and a researcher at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nrnberg, said it is important to remember that this is an individual case study, and the results are not generalizable.

The researchers also say they do not endorse hypervaccination as a strategy to enhance immunity.

The benefit is not much bigger if you get vaccinated three times or 200 times, Schober said.

According to his immunization history, the man got his first COVID vaccine in June 2021. He got 16 shots that year at centres across the eastern state of Saxony.

He ramped up his efforts in 2022, rolling up his sleeves for shots in both his right and left arms almost every day in January, for a total of 48 shots that month.

Then he kept going: 34 shots in February and six more shots in March. Around this time, German Red Cross staff members in the city of Dresden became suspicious and issued a warning to other vaccination centres, encouraging them to call the police if they saw the man again, CNN affiliate RTLreportedin April 2022.

In early March, he showed up at a vaccination centre in the town of Eilenburg and was detained by police. He was suspected of selling the vaccination cards to third parties, according to RTL. This was during a time when many European countries requiredproof of vaccinationto access public venues and travel.

The public prosecutor in Magdeburg opened an investigation into the man for the unauthorized issuing of vaccination cards and forgery of documents but did not end up filing criminal charges, according to the study.

The researchers read about the man in the news and reached out to him through the prosecutor investigating his case in May 2022. By this point, he was 213 shots in.

He agreed to provide medical information, blood and saliva samples. He also proceeded to get four more COVID shots, against the researchers medical advice, Schober said.

The researchers analyzed his blood chemistries, which showed no abnormalities linked to his hypervaccination. They also looked at various markers to evaluate how his adaptive immune system was functioning, according to the study.

The adaptive immune system is the subsection of the immune system that learns to recognize and respond to specific pathogens when you encounter them throughout your life, Miller said. There are two main cell types in the adaptive immune system, T cells and B cells.

In chronic diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis B, immune cells can become fatigued from frequent exposure to the pathogen and lose the ability to combat it effectively, Schober said. Hypervaccination, in theory, could have a similar effect.

However, thats not what the researchers found. Hypervaccination in this case increased the quantity (the number of T cells and B cell products) but did not affect the quality of the adaptive immune system, according to the study.

If you take the allegory of the immune system as an army, the number of soldiers is higher, but the soldiers themselves are not different, Schober said.

In total, the man got eight vaccine formulations, including mRNA vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, a vector-based vaccine from Johnson & Johnson and a recombinant-protein vaccine from Sanofi.

The observation that no noticeable side effects were triggered in spite of this extraordinary hypervaccination indicates that the drugs have a good degree of tolerability, Schober said in anews release.

While very interesting from a scientific perspective, individual case studies like this must always be taken with a grain of salt, Miller said. Public health recommendations, which are based on very large, randomized control trials, are what people should look to for guidance, she added.

I dont think any physician or public health official would recommend doing what this gentleman did. This is really uncharted territory, Miller said. Talk to your doctor, follow the recommended vaccine schedules, and that should be the best thing to keep you both protected from COVID and healthy and safe.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends COVID vaccination for everyone ages 6 months or older in the United States, following the vaccination schedules outlined on itswebsite. Last week, the CDCupdated its guidanceto recommend an additional dose of the current COVID vaccine for people 65 and older.

Less than a quarter of adults and only 13% of children in the U.S. have gotten the most recently recommended COVID vaccine, according toCDC data.

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A new randomized control trial from the United Kingdom shows that using ivermectin during COVID-19 infections provided little improvement in recovery rates in patients treated in clinics. The study appeared in the Journal of Infection.

The anti-parasitic drug has been investigated since 2020 as a potential treatment for COVID-19. Some early trials suggested the drug was able to reduce mortality rates and improve outcomes, but several of them had serious flaws, the authors noted. Subsequent trials and systematic reviews have largely disproved those earlier results.

The present, open-arm study compared outcomes among 8,811 SARS-CoV-2positive participants (median symptom duration, 5 days), who were randomized to outpatient treatment with ivermectin (2,157), standard care (3,256), and other treatments (3,398) from June 23, 2021, to July 1, 2022. All participants were followed up for 28 days.

The observed median time to first recovery was 14 days in the ivermectin group and 15 in the usual-care group. The authors said this result was statistically significant (hazard ratio 1.14; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.07 to 1.23), but the estimated hazard ratio was less than the pre-specified meaningful effect of 1.2.

Ivermectin also did not reduce the number of hospitalizations. Use of the drug, however, was associated with a slight increase in the proportion of participants feeling fully recovered at 3, 6 and 12 months. At 6 months, 74% of respondents in the ivermectin group and 71% in the usual care group reported feeling fully recovered from the original COVID-19 illness (rate ratio 1.05; 95% CI, 1.02 to 1.08).

Overall, these findings, while evidencing a small benefit in symptom duration, do not support the use of ivermectin as treatment for COVID-19.

"Overall, these findings, while evidencing a small benefit in symptom duration, do not support the use of ivermectin as treatment for COVID-19 in the community among a largely vaccinated population at the dose and duration we used," the authors wrote.

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BA.2.87.1 COVID variant detected in Southeast Asia - University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Astudy on 93 million individualsworldwide who received one of the major COVID-19 vaccines confirmed existing knowledge about the safety profile of these vaccines. Adverse events of special interest were rare and occurred at rates significantly lower than among individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as documented by prior studies.

For example, 36 million doses of the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine resulted in an approximate excess of 430 cases of myocarditis above the 105 expected (as derived from analysis of Figure 3 of the study). That is roughly 12 excess cases of myocarditis for every 1 million doses administered in a 42-day window post-vaccination.

By contrast, aprior studyfound an excess of 40 myocarditis cases per million SARS-CoV-2 infections in a 28-day window after a positive test, a rate 3.3 times higherin a shorter windowthan what the study observed for the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine.

Notably, myocarditis with two doses of the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine was the second highest effect size overalland the highest that could be reported with confidencefound by the study. All other adverse events of special interest occurred at far lower rates.

The researchers studied data from the Global COVID Vaccine Safety Project, an effort overseen by the multi-national Global Vaccine Data Network. The data were from 10 sites in eight countries in Europe, South America, Oceania and North America.

The study looked at the three most commonly administered vaccines: Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2, Moderna mRNA-1273 and Oxford/Astra Zeneca/Serum Institute of India ChAdOx1. The latter vaccine was withdrawn from multiple national vaccination programs in 2021 in response to an increased occurrence of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, a finding confirmed by this study.

There were 99 million individuals who received over 242 million vaccine doses included in the analysis. The researchers used a 42-day window after vaccination to look for adverse events of special interest, resulting in over 23 million person years of follow-up in total. These extraordinary numbers lent an unprecedented power to detect rare events and provided narrow confidence intervals for all but the rarest events.

Due to its size, the study had the power to uncover previously undetected adverse events of special interest. The only potential such event was acute disseminated encephalomyelitis due to the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine, but the excess number of cases was a miniscule five. The resulting confidence interval was therefore wide, and thus the results must be interpreted with caution. The researchers plan to analyze this event further in the Global COVID Vaccine Safety Data Project.

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David North, the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US) announced today the selection of Joe Kishore and Jerry White as its candidates in the 2024 presidential election campaign.

The study primarily reported its results as observed to expected event ratios, or OE ratios. It estimated expected event numbers using pre-COVID data from 2015 to 2019, with the exception of Denmark, for which the study used data from 2019-2020. It compared these expected event numbers with the numbers observed in the Global COVID Vaccine Safety Project, computing 95 percent confidence intervals on each OE ratio.

The fact that the results are reported as OE ratios can sometimes be misleading. The fact that two doses of the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine had on OE ratio of 6.1 for myocarditis might lead one to overestimate their personal risk. Although a risk of myocarditis six times higher than baseline sounds high, the extremely low expected rate of myocarditis multiplied by six is still extremely low. For the over 12 million people who received exactly two doses, there were merely approximately 266 excess cases, or an incidence rate of 0.000022.

Besides myocarditis, the statistically significant safety signal adverse events varied by vaccine. For the Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 vaccine, the only safety signal was myocarditis.

For the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine, the safety signals were myocarditis, pericarditis, and the acute disseminated encephalomyelitis mentioned previously (with just five excess events). The OE ratios for these events varied by number of doses given.

For the Oxford/Astra Zeneca/Serum Institute of India ChAdOx1vaccine, the safety signals were Guillain-Barre syndrome, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, and pericarditis. The latter, as with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis with the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine, occurred only with three doses and was too rare to give confidence in the results.

As the researchers note, their results are consistent with prior studies. All COVID-19 vaccines have undergone a high level of scrutiny, which has shown repeatedly that the vaccines are safe.

This study once again refutes anti-vaccination disinformation, most often but not entirely promulgated by the far-right. One study onvaccine misinformation on social mediafound that the most common theme was safety concerns.

Given the strength of the study and the fact that it cuts to the core of anti-vaccination messaging, the only responses possible were either ignoring the study or grossly misrepresenting it. Most of the notorious anti-vaccination personalities largely ignored it.

The top six of the Disinformation Dozen ignored the study. A2021 reportby the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that this group of 12 personalities was responsible for approximately 65 percent of online vaccine disinformation.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., number two of the Disinformation Dozen, made no reference to the study on X/Twitter. However, at least one member of the Disinformation Dozen, Erin Elizabeth, took the other tack andmisrepresented the findingsentirely, saying the findings affirmed safety concerns promulgated by anti-vaccine disinformation campaigns, when they clearly do nothing of the sort.

Additionally, apiece in the Daily MirrorSri Lankamisrepresented the studys findings, claiming falsely that it validated skeptics vaccine safety concerns. The piece also quotes Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne, the immediate past president of the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA), as saying scientific principles were abandoned during the pandemic in relationship to the vaccines. This is another lie commonly peddled by the anti-vaccine movement.

The working class must base its program on scientific evidence, which makes abundantly clear that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective at reducing ones risk of severe disease, hospitalization and death, and appear to reduce ones risk of developing Long COVID. They must be freely available to the entire global population to provide this protection, and not distributed based on the private profit interests of the pharmaceutical monopolies.

However, while the vaccines still provide a certain level of protection, the complete abandonment of all public health measures by every capitalist government has enabled SARS-CoV-2 to undergo rapid viral evolution, rendering existing vaccines increasingly ineffective at preventing infection. As a result, the danger looms over society that a far more deadly and immune-evasive variant could evolve, rendering existing vaccines worthless.

It is critical that massive resources be invested in next-generation nasal, mucosal and pan-coronavirus vaccines, which could potentially provide sterilizing immunity against all future variants as well as other types of coronaviruses that threaten to spill over into human society.

The capitalist response to the pandemic has laid bare that a society controlled by a tiny layer of financial oligarchs, whose bought-and-paid-for politicians subordinate public health to private profit along nationalist lines, is wholly incapable of advancing such scientific endeavors or public health more broadly.

Only a socialist public health program aimed at eliminating COVID-19 and other pathogens globally through the use of masks, mass testing, indoor air purification, vaccines, the proper application of social distancing measures, and other public health measures, can put an end to the ongoing needless suffering and death of the global population.

The international working class, armed with a socialist program and in alliance with the most advanced scientists, is the only social force capable of carrying out the necessary reorganization of the global economy to both stop the COVID-19 pandemic and protect humanity from future pandemics.

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Massive study confirms safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines - WSWS

NEW YORK (AP) Americans who test positive for COVID-19 no longer need to stay in isolation for five days, U.S. health officials announced Friday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its longstanding guidance, saying that people can return to work or regular activities if their symptoms are mild and improving and its been a day since theyve had a fever.

The change comes at a time when COVID-19 is no longer the public health menace it once was. It dropped from being the nations third leading cause of death early in the pandemic to 10th last year.

Most people have some degree of immunity to the coronavirus from vaccinations or from infections. And many people are not following the five-day isolation guidance anyway, some experts say.

Our goal here is to continue to protect those at risk for severe illness while also reassuring folks that these recommendation are simple, clear, easy to understand, and can be followed, said Dr. Mandy Cohen, the CDCs director,

However, some experts worry that the change may increase the risk of infection for older people and others who are more vulnerable to getting seriously ill.

COVID-19 is not causing as many hospitalizations and deaths as it did in the first years of the pandemic. The change is an effort to streamline recommendations so they are similar to longstanding recommendations for flu and other respiratory viruses. Many people with a runny nose, cough or other symptoms arent testing to distinguish whether its COVID-19, flu, or something else, officials say.

It may not be as stringent, but the guidance emphasizes that all people with respiratory symptoms should stay home while they are sick, said Dr. David Margolius, the head of Clevelands health department.

People are likely still contagious when they test positive, and that hasnt changed, said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown Universitys School of Public Health.

What has changed is how much COVID is harming us as a population, Nuzzo said.

Officials noted that some other countries and California and Oregon have eased isolation guidance in a manner similar to CDCs latest change and did not see an increase in cases.

If you have symptoms, stay home until your symptoms are mild and improving and its been a day since youve had a fever. But then you can remain cautious by wearing a mask and keeping a distance from others.

However, the CDC guidance for workers at nursing homes and other health care facilities is staying the same. That includes a recommendation that medical personnel stay home at least seven days after symptoms first appear, and that they test negative within two days of returning to work.

The agency is emphasizing that everyone should still try to prevent infections in the first place, by getting vaccinated, washing their hands, and taking steps to bring in more outdoor fresh air.

Yes, and even some who understand the rationale for the change have concerns.

My biggest worry in all of this is that employers will take this change in guidance to require employees to come back to work ... before they are ready to, before they feel well enough, and before they are not likely to pose harm to their co-workers, Nuzzo said.

COVID-19 remains especially dangerous to older people and those with other medical conditions. There are still more than 20,000 hospitalizations and more than 2,000 deaths each week due to the coronavirus, according to the CDC. Those 65 and older have the highest hospitalization and death rates.

This week, the CDC said seniors should get another dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine.

Not necessarily. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or districts decisions.

When California eased its guidance, it encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick. It also said students who test positive for COVID-19 but dont have any symptoms can attend school.

No. The CDC originally advised 10 days of isolation, but in late 2021 cut it to five days for Americans who catch the coronavirus and have no symptoms or only brief illnesses. Under that guidance for the general public, isolation only ended if a person had been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medications and if other symptoms were resolving.

AP education writer Bianca Vzquez Toness in Boston contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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COVID-19 no longer means five days in isolation, CDC says - The Associated Press

A new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases details the incredible case of a German man who received a whopping 217 COVID-19 vaccinations in just over two years! This German man can give the Florida man a run for his money. Researchers at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg were studying vaccine effectiveness when they stumbled upon this hypervaccinated individual through a newspaper report.

The 62-year-old man from Magdeburg, whose motivations for seeking so many shots remain private, readily agreed to participate in the study. Scientists were particularly interested in how his immune system handled such an extreme number of jabs, with official confirmation for 134.

Here's where things get interesting: despite his self-described hypervaccination, the man showed no signs of ever having been infected with COVID-19 and hadn't experienced any side effects from the vaccines. Even more surprisingly, researchers found his immune system to be in top shape!

For context, vaccinations normally train the immune system to recognise and fight off pathogens. But scientists worried that such frequent exposure to the same antigen (a part of the virus that triggers immune response) could lead to "exhaustion" of immune cells, making them less effective. This phenomenon is sometimes observed in chronic infections.

However, analysis of blood samples from the man, including some frozen from previous years and fresh samples taken during his 217th vaccination revealed no signs of immune cell fatigue.

"The observation that no noticeable side-effects were triggered indicates that the drugs have a good degree of tolerability," says Dr Kilian Schober, the lead researcher. They even observed significantly higher levels of virus-fighting cells and antibodies compared to people who received the standard three-dose vaccination regimen.

"Overall, we did not find any indication for a weaker immune response, rather the contrary," explains researcher Katharina Kocher. In simpler terms, the man's immune system seemed to have gotten a major boost from all those extra shots.

Important to Note: This is a single case study, and scientists caution against drawing broad conclusions. The recommended three-dose vaccination with boosters for high-risk groups remains the best strategy for most people.

This case, however, offers valuable insights. It shows that, at least for some individuals, the immune system can handle a much higher vaccination frequency than previously thought. Further research is needed, but this paves the way for a deeper understanding of our body's defense mechanisms against COVID-19.

The findings of this study have been detailed in The Lancet Infectious Diseases and can be accessed here.

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Many symptoms of COVID-19 have surfaced in the years since cases of the SARS-CoV-2 virus surfaced in late 2019. Although respiratory symptoms have received the most attention throughout the pandemic, eye pain is also a common complaint.

Eye pain, burning, and soreness can all develop with a COVID-19 infection. This article will explore why these issues develop, what eye pain symptoms you could have, and what a COVID-10-related eye problem means for your overall health.

Jelena Stanojkovic / Getty Images

You may develop eye pain with a COVID-19 infection for a few reasons.

On the simplest level, medications designed to help reduce congestion or treat cough can have a drying effect that can impact your eyes. Headaches, sinus pressure, and coughing or sneezing can also lead to eye symptoms like irritation, soreness, watering, or dryness.

Eye pain usually appears during the first week of a COVID-19 infection but can increase or appear later if your infection becomes more severe. Some of the most common eye-related complaints with a COVID-19 infection include:

The eye is a known entry point for the virus. COVID-related eye infections like conjunctivitis (pink eye) have been documented throughout the pandemic. Some evidence suggests eye secretions or drainage can transmit the virus to others.

Some studies have suggested that the proximity of the eyes to nasal passages can also increase eye symptoms, especially since the viral load (measurement of the amount of virus in the body) of SARS-CoV-2 in the nasal passages is usually higher than in the throat.

Plus, headaches, nasal congestion or drainage, fever, and other symptoms of a COVID-19 infection can also cause head pain or pressure that can affect your eyes.

There also may be a connection between neurological and immune-related complications of COVID-19 and eye pain. COVID-19 infections have been found to increase your risk of neurological disorders associated with inflammation or nerve damage.

These viral infections have also been linked to autoimmune reactions (in which your immune system attacks your own cells), which could increase sensitivity in different areas of the body or even cause your own tissues to work against themselves.

Several versions (variants) of the virus that causes COVID-19 have appeared since it was first recognized. While there are some consistent symptoms across all variants, symptoms can vary among variants.

For example, losing your sense of smell is a symptom associated most with the Delta variant, while congestion and headache were more prominent with the Omicron variant of the virus. The JN.1 variant circulating in early 2024 more frequently featured gastrointestinal symptoms like diarrhea.

How COVID affects your eyes and vision may depend on the variant you were infected with and any previous health or vision problems you had before the infection.

Dryness, irritation, and soreness in your eyes with an active viral infection aren't that uncommon, but some lasting eye symptoms have been included in lists of long COVID symptoms.

"Long COVID" is the term for the symptoms and ongoing complications people may experience long after their COVID-19 infection is considered resolved.

Inflammation is common with most forms of COVID-19, and ongoing eye problems are thought to stem from continued inflammation, nerve damage, and changes to your immune system after your acute illness.

Some documented eye problems that have been linked to long COVID include the following:

Some of these eye problems can affect your vision and result in permanent damage.

Most eye symptoms associated with COVID-19 resolve on their own. One study found that eye symptoms with a COVID infection went away within two weeks the active infection resolving.

For ongoing symptoms that continue after the infection, it's important to schedule an appointment with an eye care provider to rule out other conditions or complications.

Issues like dry eye, irritation, and even infection can be treated with things like eye drops, ointments, or antibiotics as recommended or prescribed by a healthcare provider. For more serious complications linked to blood clots that could affect or even destroy your vision, more intense treatments may be required.

One option for treating eye problems related to blood clots after a COVID-19 infection is intravenous medication that dissolves the clots, like Activase (alteplase). Even if the clot resolves, you could require ongoing treatment to address any permanent damage.

Generally, people who develop serious eye problems have severe forms of COVID-19 infection. Outside of the severity of the initial infection, COVID-related eye problems tend to happen more in people with preexisting conditions like:

In terms of your COVID-19 infection, it's important you see healthcare provider if your symptoms become severe, resulting in problems like:

For eye problems, specifically, over-the-counter lubricating eye drops and at-home remedies like a warm compress may help most.

Don't wait, though, if your symptoms become worse or you notice that your vision is being affected. Retinal bleeding and blood clots usually appear with a sudden total loss of vision without pain. They must be treated as a medical emergency to avoid permanent vision loss.

COVID-19 infections can appear with a wide range of symptoms, including eye pain. Eye pain, soreness, and irritation usually fade in a week or two as the infection resolves. However, some COVID-related problems can lead to more severe eye problems and even vision loss.

Call your healthcare provider to schedule a more in-depth evaluation if you have vision changes during or after your COVID-19 infection.

The information in this article is current as of the date listed, which means newer information may be available when you read this. For the most recent updates on COVID-19, visit our coronavirus news page.

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COVID-19 and Eye Pain: What's the Link? - Verywell Health

Rates of new-onset autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic disease (AIRD) such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus were significantly increased following bouts of COVID-19 in South Korea and Japan, researchers found.

With data from large repositories in the two countries, AIRD rates were 25% higher in South Korea (95% CI 18-31) and 79% greater in Japan (95% CI 77-82) among COVID-19 patients versus uninfected controls from the general population, according to Dong Keon Yon, MD, PhD, of Kyung Hee University in Seoul, and colleagues.

Absolute rates after COVID were 1.15% in Korea and 3.87% in Japan.

However, vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 reduced the likelihood of developing AIRD following breakthrough infection, except when those infections became severe, the researchers reported in Annals of Internal Medicine. In fact, severity of COVID-19 increased AIRD risks across the board.

Yon and colleagues stopped short of calling AIRD a form of "long COVID," in which fatigue, malaise, and respiratory symptoms typically predominate. What they did conclude was that AIRD appears to qualify as a long-term COVID-19 complication: AIRD development rates remained strongly elevated in both countries up to a year after infection, and beyond that in the Japanese data (HR 1.57 vs general population, 95% CI 1.50-1.64) though not in Korea.

The risk increase wasn't an artifact of COVID-19 patients having more contact with healthcare systems and thus heightened observation, the researchers emphasized. Their analyses also included comparisons between COVID-19 patients and people treated for influenza; AIRD rates were significantly greater in the COVID groups, by 30% in the Korean data and by 14% in Japan.

Other studies had examined rheumatologic disease rates following COVID-19, which also found increases in risk. But those studies didn't account for possible ascertainment bias, Yon and colleagues pointed out, nor did they look at vaccination's potential influence.

The new analysis used a case-control design. Korean national data included some 394,000 people with documented COVID-19 infection. Yon and colleagues selected about 177,000 for propensity matching; each was coupled with four uninfected (neither COVID nor influenza) individuals in the general population, for a total of 676,000 controls. The comparison between COVID and flu patients included 95,000 in each group. Matching covered numerous health-related and sociodemographic parameters at baseline. The Japanese cohorts included 961,000 COVID-19 patients to be compared with 1.6 million uninfected people; for COVID versus influenza, the group sizes were 115,000 and 110,000, respectively.

Severity of COVID-19 was established through records of treatments such as intensive care admission and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Vaccination status, including the number of vaccine doses, was also contained in the data. Yon and colleagues identified AIRD cases in two categories: inflammatory arthritis, comprising rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis and spondyloarthritis; and connective tissue diseases, which included lupus, Sjgren's syndrome, systemic sclerosis, polymyalgia rheumatica, mixed connective tissue disease, dermatomyositis, polymyositis, polyarteritis nodosa, and vasculitis.

Not all the results were similar between countries or in the comparisons between COVID and influenza. For example, no elevation in rates of inflammatory arthritis was seen in Korea with respect to the general population (HR 0.90, 95% CI 0.65-1.24), yet in Japan the risk was doubled (HR 2.02, 95% CI 1.96-2.07). On the other hand, Koreans with COVID went on to face substantially greater risk for inflammatory arthritis than did those with flu, albeit without statistical significance (HR 1.92, 95% CI 0.34-3.65), while in Japan the rates hardly differed (HR 1.07, 95% CI 1.03-1.13).

Patterns were more consistent for connective tissue diseases, with rates significantly higher after COVID-19 in both types of comparison in both countries.

Elevations in AIRD rates were apparent early, by 26% in Korea and 87% in Japan relative to general population controls within the first 6 months after infection, and by 33% and 44% in Korea and Japan, respectively, relative to influenza patients. The elevations shrank a little during the period 6 to 12 months after infection. After 1 year, there was no difference in either country between previous COVID and flu patients, and only in Japan did the elevation relative to the general population persist.

Yon and colleagues also looked at the influence of COVID severity on AIRD rates, both overall and with respect to vaccination status. Relative to uninfected controls, AIRD rates in Korea were 22% greater in patients with mild COVID, but 42% higher in moderate-severe cases. AIRD was also less frequent in COVID survivors who had been vaccinated, with hazard ratios of 0.59 after one dose and 0.42 after two (both P<0.05).

Vaccination did not, however, protect fully against AIRD when COVID was rated as moderate-severe (HR 1.30 vs uninfected controls).

The researchers cited a number of limitations to the analysis, including the reliance on administrative data, the possibility of unmeasured confounders, and the restriction to East Asian populations. Also, the data were recorded prior to 2022 and thus predated the broad spread of the Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant. Sample sizes for some types of AIRD were probably too small to yield meaningful results.

John Gever was Managing Editor from 2014 to 2021; he is now a regular contributor.

Disclosures

The National Research Foundation of Korea funded the study.

Authors declared they had no relevant relationships with commercial entities.

Primary Source

Annals of Internal Medicine

Source Reference: Kim MS, et al "Long-term autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic outcomes of COVID-19" Ann Intern Med 2024; DOI: 10.7326/M23-1831.

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COVID-19 Tied to Increased Risk for Rheumatic Disease - Medpage Today

In a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers assessed cognitive functioning among adults with varying levels of persistence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in England.

Their results suggest that COVID-19 is associated with measurable cognitive deficits, which may persist in the long term.

Study: Cognition and Memory after Covid-19 in a Large Community Sample. Image Credit:Berit Kessler/ Shutterstock

The first documented cases of brain fog, with symptoms such as poor memory, impaired concentration, and difficulty thinking, emerged as early as 2020, indicating that COVID-19 could have long-term cognitive impacts.

Though the phenomenon is well-known, what is lacking is information on how it may persist and which aspects of cognitive functioning are most affected.

In this study, researchers hypothesized that cognitive deficits after the onset of COVID-19 should be quantifiable and associated with covariates related to illness severity and duration.

Their second hypothesis was that individuals with prolonged COVID-19 symptoms should show more observable memory and executive function impairment, including brain fog and poor memory.

They conducted a cohort-based study tracking the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among 3,099,386 individuals aged over 18 years. Of these, 800,000 people were invited to complete a cognitive assessment and follow-up survey.

To be included, they should have received a positive result on a SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic test or suspected that they had COVID-19 and experienced symptoms for 12 weeks or more. Additionally, unvaccinated people with SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin-G antibodies and other randomly selected people from the full sample were included.

The cognitive assessment tested immediate and spatial working memory, verbal analogical reasoning, two-dimensional mental manipulation, spatial planning, word definitions, delayed memory, and information sampling. For each domain, participants were scored on accuracy; secondary information was collected on types of errors and response times.

Individuals were categorized into six groups based on SARS-CoV-2 duration. The first category included those who had never experienced an infection or had an unconfirmed one; all other categories required a positive test result.

People in the second category had asymptomatic infections, those in the third had short COVID-19 that resolved in four weeks or less, and those in the fourth had symptoms that resolved in less than 12 weeks. To be in the fifth category, individuals had symptoms that persisted for more than 12 weeks; those in the sixth had persistent symptoms continuing until the cognitive assessments.

Researchers assessed nonresponse bias to examine which factors were associated with accessing and completing the cognitive assessment. Linear regressions, factor analysis, and propensity-score matching (PSM) were used to analyze the data. Sensitivity analyses were also conducted to test the validity and robustness of the results.

Of the 800,000 people invited to participate, 34.6% completed the questionnaire, with 141,583 completing at least one cognitive testing task and 112,964 completing all eight.

Among individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 once, being infected earlier during the pandemic was associated with greater decreases in the overall cognitive score compared to those infected later. However, the gap narrowed after adjusting for the severity of the illness.

On average, people who were ill for longer, were hospitalized, or were infected early on in the pandemic had lower overall cognitive scores than those who had never had COVID-19.

Multivariate regression results indicated that people infected during the initial stages (when the original virus or alpha variant dominated) showed higher cognitive functioning decreases than those infected with the alpha or omicron variants.

Similarly, greater decreases were seen in people with persistent and unresolved symptoms compared to those who never had COVID-19 and among people who were hospitalized compared to those who were not.

The PSM analysis showed similar trends; cognitive advantages were observed based on vaccination status, with people who received two or more doses performing best. There was, however, no significant difference based on which vaccine was taken.

This large-sample community-based study suggests that COVID-19 may be associated with long-term and quantifiable cognitive deficits. However, people infected with more recent variants may experience more negligible effects on cognitive functioning.

This could be because earlier strains of SARS-CoV-2 were dominant at a time when effective treatments were not available, and the health system faced heavy burdens. Repeated infections do not appear to have any effect, but vaccination (particularly two or more doses) may provide small cognitive advantages.

Limitations of this study include the possibility of participant self-selection bias and reliance on self-reported data. Certain groups were overrepresented in the sample, including White persons and women; younger people and certain underprivileged groups were underrepresented.

Further studies are required to provide information on the longer-term implications of these findings.

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COVID-19 linked to long-lasting cognitive deficits, study finds - News-Medical.Net

Its been four years since the COVID-19 pandemic started, and a lot has changed. Life has mostly gone back to normal, and many treat the Coronavirus like the common cold. Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made a big change in COVID-19 protocol recommendations for 2024.

The new guidance throws out the previous five-day isolation recommendation in favor of a more relaxed approach. The CDC is also now lumping COVID-19 recommendations with those of the flu and RSV.

CDC is making updates to the recommendations now because the U.S. is seeing far fewer hospitalizations and deaths associated with COVID-19 and because we have more tools than ever to combat flu, COVID, and RSV, the organization said in a statement online.

The CDC also stressed the importance of core prevention steps and strategies to lower the risk of getting seriously ill from a respiratory virus, including staying up to date with vaccines, practicing good hand hygiene, and focusing on cleaner air by trying to bring in more fresh outside air, purifying indoor air (by using the best air purifiers), and gathering outside instead of inside.

But a lot of people understandably want to know what they should now do when they get sick with COVID-19. Heres what the CDC says, along with how infectious disease doctors feel about the changes.

If you test positive for COVID-19 or have respiratory virus symptoms (like a fever, chills, fatigue, cough, runny nose, and/or headache) that arent explained by another cause, the CDC recommends that you stay home and away from others. During that isolation period, it's best to wear a high-quality, well-fitting mask, like an N95 mask, when you need to be around others.

The CDC says that you can go back to your normal activities when youve been fever-free without the use of fever-reducing medication, and feeling better for at least 24 hours.

When you go back to your normal activities, the CDC recommends that you take added precaution for the next five days, like using masks, practicing physical distancing, and testing yourself when youll be around other people indoors.

Keep in mind that you may still be able to spread the virus that made you sick, even if you are feeling better, the CDC says. You are likely to be less contagious at this time, depending on factors like how long you were sick or how sick you were.

If you develop a fever or start to feel worse after youve gone back to your normal activities, the CDC recommends that you stay home and away from others for at least 24 hours until your symptoms get better and you havent had a fever without the help of fever-reducing medication. Once you go back to your usual routine, the CDC recommends again taking extra precautions for the next five days.

If youre at high risk for serious complications from COVID-19, are immunocompromised, or are over 65, its a good idea to contact your doctor to see if you may benefit from taking an antiviral medication like Paxlovid, says William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Infectious disease experts are supportive of the CDCs change. Its a good thing and will be welcomed by the general public, which has largely been doing this on their own for some time, Dr. Schaffner says. Dr. Schaffner says he and several other people in the infectious disease community have been urging the CDC to revise the guidelines for a while. The CDC waited a bit to make sure that the current trends in COVID really were sustained, he says.

Infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, says hes supportive of the new guidelines. They reflect the fact that the context of COVID-19the respiratory virus infection for which we have the most toolshas changed, he says. Similar updates to the guidelines were made in California, Oregon, and many other countries and, in that respect, the CDC was lagging.

Dr. Schaffner points out that, while people continue to get seriously ill and die from COVID-19, thats no longer the case for most of the American public. Well over 90% of the U.S. population has had some experience with COVID, through infection or vaccination, or both, he says. The virus itself is not as virulent or severe as it once was, and it appears to produce somewhat milder disease now."

Shortening the isolation period should have no measurable impact on how much COVID-19 spreads in the general population, Dr. Schaffner says.

To protect others around you if you test positive for COVID-19, the CDC recommends isolatingincluding from members of your householduntil youve been fever-free without the help of fever-reducing medications for 24 hours. This is especially important if youre around anyone who is at high risk of serious disease, Dr. Schaffner says.

Masking up when you need to be around others and practicing careful hand hygiene can also help limit the spread, the CDC says. Its also a good idea to take steps to create cleaner indoor air, like opening doors and windows and using exhaust fans, per the CDC. You can even try adding an air purifier to your space.

Dr. Schaffner stresses the importance of getting the COVID-19 vaccine when youre healthy as well. So many people have not taken advantage of the updated vaccine, he says. But the vast majority of people being hospitalized today because of COVID are unvaccinated.

Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Mens Health, Womens Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a masters degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.

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Current CDC COVID Guidelines 2024: What to Do if You Test Positive - Prevention Magazine

A bold move to rip up intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines appears to have been quietly dropped, after the World Trade Organization (WTO) opted not to extend the measure.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many commentators argued for a radical change to global licensing rules, compelled by the urgency of the situation and the need to broaden access to newly-available vaccines.

This led to the so-called Trade-Related Aspects

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Not needed after all, WTO drops the COVID-19 TRIPS waiver - The Pharma Letter