SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Two new UCSF studies could pave the way toward understanding some of the mysteries of COVID and might hold a key to explaining long COVID.
The research found the COVID-19 virus could linger in the blood 14 months after infection and up to two years in tissue samples.
Dr. Michael Peluso, who led both studies, joined KCBS Radio's Patti Reising on this week's "As Prescribed" to discuss the research and whether the findings can explain why people experience long COVID.
"These pieces of the virus that causes COVID can stick around in people's bodies for longer than we initially expected," Dr. Peluso said. "And so we really think that if that is happening, it must be coming from the deep tissues in our bodies. And only by directly examining some of those tissues and people who are living with the condition, will we really be able to get answers about why that happens and how much that is happening and whether that actually drives long COVID."
Researchers estimate 70 million people or more worldwide, and up to 18 million people in the U.S. alone, suffer from ongoing symptoms of long COVID -- including brain fog, fatigue and memory loss -- which can persist for weeks, months or even years after their initial diagnosis.
"In general, we know that people who have a more severe COVID infection are more likely to get long COVID, but we see long COVID even after quite mild infections," said Dr. Peluso. "We decided to do a deep dive into trying to understand how often this was happening and why it might be happening using both blood samples, which are quite easily accessible, as well as deeper tissue samples, which are harder to get but often very informative."
In the first study , researchers analyzed blood from about 170 people for up to 14 months after their initial COVID infection, and compared those samples to blood collected from people in the community years before COVID emerged.
"We basically found that at any one time, between three months and 14 months after people had COVID, we could identify pieces of the virus in their blood in about 10% of people, which is not 50% or 100% of people, but our assumption was that it should be 0% of people," said Dr. Peluso. "So this is a really surprising observation that this virus that we all think of as transient, that comes and goes, that that might not be the right framework for this in everybody. And we really need to understand why that is and what it means."
Data from the study shows that the sicker a person is with COVID, the more likely they are to have pieces of the virus sticking around and increasing their chances of long COVID symptoms. While researchers are still working to unravel why that is, Dr. Peluso said the single most important question is determining if there is a clear connection between antigen persistence and long COVID.
"We know that some people get long COVID and we know that some people, even without long COVID, have bad medical things happen to them after a COVID infection -- heart attacks, strokes, et cetera. So one possibility is that this persistent antigen that we're seeing in the blood and in the tissue of people post COVID is actually driving those conditions by causing inflammation and immune dysregulation or by some other mechanism," Dr. Peluso explained. "The other possibility is that this is all just fossilized junk. It's remnant of the virus, and it is not doing anything. That is equally possible at this point in time."
"If this is remnants of the virus causing all of these downstream consequences, that means that the answer is to start by targeting remnants of the virus," he added. "Our hope is that over the next year, we or other groups can draw that direct connection, which would help us set up research studies and a treatment agenda to try to get people feeling better."
Listen to this week's "As Prescribed" to learn more. You can also listen to last week's episode to learn why your allergy symptoms are lasting longer and may be severe, here .
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"As Prescribed" is sponsored by UCSF.
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