Interesting case: Woman combats coronavirus for 335 days after beating cancer

October 22, 2021  11:29

The coronavirus remained in the organism of a patient for nearly a year due to a weak immune system. This is the longest case of COVID-19 and was recorded at the National Health Institute in Betesd. The 47-year-old woman was admitted to a hospital due to COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 for the first time. Three years before that, she had been cured of lymphoma.

Nine months later, after a regular checkup, she tested positive for COVID-19, even though she didn’t have symptoms. In the beginning, doctors assumed the test showed the wrong-positive result, but a month later, she tested positive again, and there was too much viral load.

Genome sequencing showed that it is the same virus that was detected in 2020, meaning she hadn’t gotten infected twice. The woman received treatment again, and only 335 days after getting infected did she finally test negative for COVID-19.

Doctors say the long-term circulation of the virus in the patient’s organism was due to the treatment of an oncological disease. The woman was undergoing CAR-T cellular therapy based on the use of the patient’s own cells in order to destroy the malignant cells. The treatment helped her beat cancer, but reduced the level of B-cells, which contribute to the emergence of neutralizing antibodies.

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