- Mice injected with antibodies from people with Long Covid developed symptoms replicating the disease, a new preprint found. The findings add weight to the hypothesis that Long Covid and other diseases like myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) may develop as a result of autoimmunity. It also introduces more questions about whether plasma from people with Long Covid is safe for donation, as we reported on last month. The results of the preprint were also validated by other researchers last month. Read more about the study from one of its authors.
- A new study in Nature Medicine assessing the electronic health records of 135,00 people who had Covid-19 found that people initially hospitalized with Covid-19 still faced major adverse health outcomes three years later (including death), though these declined over time. People who were infected but not hospitalized had less severe outcomes, but still had significant elevations in pulmonary, neurologic, and gastrointestinal sequelae. “The big revelation here is that the risk persists for 3 years in several organ systems (e.g. GI and nervous system) even 3 years after a mild [COVID-19]infection,” researcher Ziyad Al-Aly wrote in a thread about the study. Read more about the study from co-authors Al-Aly and Eric Topol.
- Lastly, a systematic review discovered that longer commercial airplane flight duration is associated with a greater risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Flights longer than 6 hours carried 25 times more risk than shorter flights, yet long flights with enforced masking “had no transmission reported.” The review highlights the effectiveness of mask mandates on planes for mitigating respiratory virus transmission.
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