Vaccination may reduce the severity and impact of long COVID symptoms, researchers report today.
Dr Viet-Thi Tran of the Public Assistance Hospitals in Paris, France, and colleagues tested this approach in national long COVID research group in France, the ComPaRe cohort.
This study included 455 pairs of adult patients matched for a range of factors, who had signs of long COVID following infection early in the pandemic. One in each pair received a vaccine after recruitment to the trial and the other did not.
Analysis showed a small reduction in the number of long COVID symptoms and a rise in the chance of remission when tested 120 days after vaccination with any of the COVID vaccines.
Twice as many of the vaccinated patients reported remission of long COVID symptoms.
"Vaccination reduced the effect of long COVID on patients’ lives and the proportion of patients with an unacceptable symptom state," say the researchers in *BMJ Medicine* today.
They add: “Millions of patients have persistent symptoms after infection with the SARS CoV-2 virus and many more might be at risk in the future. To our knowledge, this is the first study of a potential intervention that could reduce the burden of long COVID on care systems.
“The results suggest that vaccination should be encouraged in all patients who have already been infected with the SARS CoV-2 virus.”
These results are in line with the findings of a systematic review of 16 observational studies from five countries, published in the same journal.
Commenting on the findings, Dr Frances Edwards of North Bristol NHS Trust and Fergus Hamilton of the University of Bristol state: “COVID-19 vaccination is likely to have some beneficial effect on long COVID through reducing case severity as well as incidence.”
They call for future trials comparing vaccination against placebo in patients with long COVID.
Tran, V-T. et al. Efficacy of first dose of COVID-19 vaccine versus no vaccination on symptoms of patients with long COVID: target trial emulation based on ComPaRe e-cohort. doi: 10.1136/bmjmed-2022-000229 [abstract]
Byambasuren, O. et al. Effect of COVID-19 vaccination on long COVID: Systematic Review. *BMJ Medicine* 1 March 2023 doi: 10.1136/bmjmed-2022-000385 [abstract]
Edwards, F. and Hamilton, F. W. Impact of COVID-19 vaccination on long COVID. *BMJ Medicine* 1 March 2023 doi: 10.1136/bmjmed-2022-000470 [abstract]
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