The Covid is calling for reinforcements to better attack us! This is what suggests several recent studies which show that the Epstein-Barr virus, a virus of the herpes family responsible among other things for infectious mononucleosis, can reactivate after infection with the coronavirus. And that the patients who present this reactivation are those who have the greatest risk of developing severe forms of Covid-19 or long Covid.
The coronavirus wakes up his “friends”
The Epstein-Barr virus is very widespread in the population and is thought to be found in 95% of adults. But the vast majority of people who have the virus don’t even know it, because they acquire it during childhood and do not (or few) develop symptoms. While infection during adolescence or adulthood can cause infectious mononucleosis or Burkitt’s leukemia, a very aggressive cancer of lymphoid cells. After infection, this virus remains in the body in a dormant form and can reactivate during certain illnesses, causing fatigue, fever, headaches, neurological problems, digestive problems or even rashes. . Symptoms that are also very common in patients with long Covid.
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To understand if this virus could be the cause of these symptoms in the long Covid, researchers from the United States and Turkey studied a cohort of 185 people with Covid, of which 56 (30.3%) developed a long form of the disease (study published in the journal Pathogens in June 2021). By looking for antibodies specific to the Epstein-Barr virus (some of which are detectable only during reactivation of the virus), the researchers found that two thirds of patients with long Covid (66.7%) testified to reactivation of this virus, against only 10% in those who have not developed a long Covid. And this reactivation was still visible for up to three months after infection, suggesting that the Epstein-Barr virus remains present as long as the person is showing symptoms. “We found similar reactivation rates in those who had symptoms for months and those for whom the coronavirus infection occurred a few weeks ago. That is, the reactivation would happen at the same time que the person catches the Covid-19 or soon after ”, explains in a communicated David J. Hurley, microbiologist at the University of Georgia (United States) and author of the study.
Reactivation of the Epstein-Barr virus, cause or consequence of the long Covid?
Other teams had already demonstrated this reactivation of the Epstein-Barr virus in patients with severe forms of Covid-19. Researchers from Wuhan University (China) had shown that 55% of patients hospitalized in January and February 2020 had such a reactivation (study published in May 2021 in Scientific Reports). A italian team had also shown that this reactivation was more frequent in intensive care patients than in conventional hospitalization. And an french study had shown that patients with this reactivation spent double the time in intensive care.
However, it remains unclear whether this reactivation is really a cause of these severe or long forms of the disease, or if, on the contrary, it is a consequence of the greater inflammation observed in these patients. But one last argument seems to tip the scales: a chinese study on more than 1,000 patients in Wuhan during the first wave shows that treatment with the antiviral ganciclovir, which attacks viruses of the herpes family (including Epstein-Barr), would reduce the risk of death. Together, these studies show that it could be interesting to measure this reactivation (as well as that of other viruses in the body) to detect some of the patients at risk of severe form or long covid, paving the way for a potential treatment. .
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