Vaccines relieve long Covid symptoms, survey says

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Survey suggests that people with long Covid symptoms are finding relief after being vaccinated.
• mRNA vaccines are particularly most beneficial among the available vaccines.
• Analysis authors said that data is promising but needs further study

A survey of more than 800 participants shows that the prevailing Covid-19 vaccines tend to ease the symptoms of long Covid.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), long Covid is a range of symptoms that can last weeks or months after first being infected with the coronavirus. Symptoms include tiredness, brain fog, chest pain, fever, and headache, to name a few.

Medical experts are still trying to understand the phenomenon, with people suffering from health conditions such as chronic fatigue and major organ failure.

With the widespread of the Covid-19 vaccines, most have expressed worry over their side effects. However, anecdotal reports have so far suggested that vaccines turned out to be beneficial for people with long Covid.

Although the analysis has yet to be peer reviewed, survey results by the advocacy group LongCovidSOS could shed some light towards long term recovery and normalcy.

The survey was participated in by 812 people – contacted via social media – with long Covid in the UK and internationally. The respondents, who were mostly white and female, were asked to wait at least a week after their first vaccine dosage to prevent their responses from being affected by the side effects of the vaccines.

Results across 14 common long Covid symptoms were compared before and after the first jab.

According to LongCovidSOS data, 57.6% of respondents experienced an overall improvement in symptoms; 24.6% with no change in symptoms; and 18.7% whose symptoms worsened after the inoculation.

On an important note, those who received mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer, BioNTech, or Moderna reported more improvements in symptoms, compared to those who got adenovirus vaccines such as Oxford or AstraZeneca.

The Moderna vaccine yielded the most promising results, with respondents seeing the best improvements in symptoms.

Moreover, Moderna-vaccinated individuals were also less likely to endure deterioration.

Ondine Sherwood, one of the analysis authors of LongCovidSOS said that “this will reassure people that they would have to be quite unlucky to really have an overall worsening of symptoms. The data is very encouraging, but we don’t know how long the benefits last.”

“There isn’t a blood pressure tablet that fixes everybody, and similarly, there’s not one long-Covid treatment that’s going to fix everyone – but the fact that one treatment does fix something means that there’s bound to be other treatments out there that will fix others,” said another author Dr. David Strain.

Dr. Strain noted, though, that in the 130 survey respondents who received both doses of the vaccine, some got better after their first dose – before finding their situation worsening again — and then improved further after their second dose.

Professor Danny Altmann of the Imperial College in London cleared that these speculations are mere observations and need further investigation and study.

Source: The Guardian