Common cold infections may prime some for long COVID

Patients with autoimmune rheumatoid disease who have more antibodies specific to the common cold may be more likely to develop long COVID-19, according to new research published Sept. 6 in Science Translational Medicine.

While they note that these findings are not likely true for all cases of long COVID-19 conditions, it still points to a significant new area of understanding that has been difficult for clinicians to nail down. 

“At the very beginning of the pandemic, we joined forces to identify every rheumatic disease patient with COVID seen at our institutions so that we could follow their clinical course and collect survey and blood data,”  Jeffrey Sparks, MD, co-corresponding author and HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s said in a statement. “At first, we thought we might be doing this for a month or two, but the work continues today, and we are gaining important insights about a potential immune mechanism that may lead to long COVID, especially among patients with rheumatic disease.”

While the study focused exclusively on the outcome and trajectory of patients with autoimmune rheumatoid disease, researchers noted “the findings serve as an important indicator that a person’s pre-pandemic viral history could modulate one’s risk for long COVID.”