British corona patient cured after 411 days of infection

A man with a weakened immune system in the UK has been infected with the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus for 411 days. The patient was only cured after treatment with neutralizing antibodies, as reported by the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.

The now 59-year-old man tested positive for the corona virus for the first time in December 2020, shortly after a kidney transplant. The man had to take medication to prevent his body from rejecting the new kidney. However, these weakened his immune system, preventing him from shaking off the virus. Despite three vaccinations, he always tested positive for the virus until January 2022.

A genetic analysis of the virus revealed that the patient was infected with the early corona variant that first appeared in Wuhan, China. This variant was dominant in the UK until the end of 2020. The researchers also found that the virus mutated multiple times in the patient’s body.

Ultimately, the patient was treated with a combination of antibodies known as Regeneron, which was also given to then-US President Donald Trump in 2020. Two months later, the infection was gone.

According to the experts, there is no effective antibody treatment for the currently dominant corona variant Omicron in Great Britain or the European Union. “Some people with compromised immune systems are still at risk for serious illness and ongoing infection,” said Luke Blagdon Snell, physician at King’s College London, who recently published his findings in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. We are still working on a solution how best to treat such people.

The patient, who has since been cured, is one of the people with one of the longest known corona infections. A patient also treated at Guy’s and St. Thomas Hospital was infected for 505 days before dying.

(saw/sda/dpa)