Can COVID vaccines help long-haulers with symptoms? Early evidence offers clues
Months after developing COVID-19, many people continue to suffer debilitating symptoms such as fatigue, gastrointestinal problems, depression and “brain fog,” sometimes appearing long after infections subside and affecting even those who only experienced mild bouts of the disease.
The mysterious condition, commonly referred to as “long COVID-19,” is under investigation across the globe; Congress recently provided scientists $1.15 billion over four years to discover why it affects some people and how to treat and prevent it.
But now, early research, surveys and heaps of personal revelations suggest COVID-19 vaccines may be helping some long-haulers — as the people affected by the condition have come to be called — recover from months of confusion, discomfort and despair.
“I had Covid in July and have had long hauler symptoms for over eight months. Each month I got a little better until about two weeks ago when I had a really bad flare up,” wrote Kel Horner, a member of the public Facebook group Survivor Corps, a nonprofit that connects COVID-19 survivors with each other and the medical community. “I had scheduled my vaccine and was a little worried about getting it, but decided I would….I woke up [the next day] feeling better than I have in months.”
“I honestly feel like the vaccine reset something. It is probably too early to celebrate, but I feel in my heart this vaccine helped,” Horner said.
Another member of the group also shared that their symptoms improved after getting a coronavirus vaccine.
“My brain fog disappeared three days after the first vaccination and my energy level and mood were much improved,’ member Laura Gross said. “I still can’t exert too much mentally and physically, but the downside is NEVER what it was before vaccination.”
The same story of liberation is shared by many others, including doctors.
Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist at Columbia University in New York City, estimates that between 30% and 50% of patients improve after receiving Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, WebMD reported.
“I’m seeing this chunk of people, they tell me their brain fog has improved, their fatigue is gone, the fevers that wouldn’t resolve have now gone,” he said. “I’m seeing that personally, and I’m hearing it from my colleagues,” Griffin said.
A poll posted on the Survivor Corps Facebook page shows that of about 400 respondents, nearly 200 said their long-COVID-19 symptoms have improved since getting vaccinated. More than 270 people reported their symptoms have remained the same.
“The implications are huge. Some of this damage is permanent damage. It’s not going to cure the scarring of your heart tissue, it’s not going to cure the irreparable damage to your lungs, but if [COVID-19 vaccines are] making people feel better, then that’s an indication there’s viral persistence going on,” Diana Berrent, a long-COVID-19 patient who founded Survivor Corps, told WedMD.
Long-haulers and ‘persistent viral reservoirs’’
On the other hand, about 60 people reported in the Facebook poll that their symptoms have worsened since getting vaccinated. It’s unusual, but doctors and scientists have reason to believe long-COVID-19 isn’t just the persistence of one disease, but the culmination of many.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist working on viral infectious diseases and vaccines at Yale University in Connecticut, proposed three potential mechanisms behind the condition in a post in the blog Elemental.
One possibility is that long-haulers have “persistent viral reservoirs,” like a storage bin of coronavirus particles that continue to make its host sick. “Viral ghosts” — fragments of the virus such as its genetic information or proteins — could be separate culprits that are capable of “stimulating the immune system” even after infection is cleared, Iwasaki wrote.
Or, the coronavirus somehow convinces the body to turn on itself, causing it to aggressively attack its own defenses, as is the case with most autoimmune disorders such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
“Many studies have provided support for all three of these mechanisms,” Iwasaki wrote in the blog post. “I suspect that people with long Covid have varying degrees of all three mechanisms taking place. Thus, long Covid consists of multiple types of diseases.”
The COVID-19 vaccines may be improving long-hauler’s symptoms by giving their bodies special immune cells and antibodies that can remove viral reservoirs or ghosts, or by shifting the autoimmune response to focus its attention elsewhere, thus allowing long-haulers to heal and feel relief from symptoms.
There’s much to learn about vaccines and long-COVID-19
Still, much remains unknown about the conflicting responses of long-haulers following vaccination.
“They might be different disease processes and you manage them differently,” Dr. Adam Lauring, a virologist and infectious disease physician at the University of Michigan, told The New York Times. “It might be that there’s a subset of people who have a certain type of long Covid, who respond well to vaccines, but there might be other people who have a different subtype that we haven’t quite defined yet.”
Dr. Michael Saag, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of Alabama at Birmingham shared his own theories with The Washington Post. He worries that COVID-19 vaccines could send long-hauler’s immune systems into overdrive, worsening symptoms.
“I’m looking at that disorder as a potential overreaction to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and stimulating [patients’ immune systems] further could make them worse,” Saag told the outlet. “I’m intrigued and puzzled by the reports and curious to see whether this pans out to be real and, if so, why is it happening.”
While more data is collected, health experts agree the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks of COVID-19 reinfection or worsening long-hauler symptoms.
A separate small study conducted in the U.K. found that 23% of long-COVID-19 symptoms improved among 44 vaccinated people compared to 15% in 22 unvaccinated individuals. Meanwhile, vaccinated people reported that about 6% percent of their symptoms worsened after getting a shot.
The researchers concluded that COVID-19 vaccination was not associated with “a worsening of Long Covid symptoms, quality of life or mental wellbeing,” and that long-haulers should still get vaccinated when they are eligible. The team also speculated that a placebo effect — a beneficial effect that stems from a person’s belief in the vaccine rather than the vaccine itself — could play a role in the relief of long-hauler symptoms.
“It’s clear that vaccines have helped some people with long Covid with their symptoms,” Iwasaki wrote in the blog Elemental. “While the numbers are still small, these are encouraging signs.”
This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 3:43 PM with the headline "Can COVID vaccines help long-haulers with symptoms? Early evidence offers clues."
