There have been only two study reports regarding these kinds of cases: one is about an
.
The 36-year-old woman was diagnosed with AIDS back in 2006. She began to observe weakness and gradually became immunosuppressed. She tested positive for
in September 2020 and carried SARS-CoV-2 for 216 days within her.
During that period, the virus underwent more than 30 mutations in which 13 occurred to the spike protein, and 19 others caused genetic shifts in the viral genome.
Two of the viral mutations that occurred in her body seem to correlate with the mutations that created ‘variants of concern.’
- E484K mutation, which is part of the Alpha variant B.1.1.7 (first seen in the UK)
- N510Y mutation, which is part of the Beta variant B.1.351 (first seen in South Africa)
It is still not clear whether the woman passed on these mutated strains to others.
Dr. Juan Ambrosini, associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Barcelona, commented, “But it is probably the exception rather than the rule for people living for HIV because prolonged infection requires severe immunocompromise.” In this case, the woman in the case study was immunosuppressed.
The study report of this exclusive COVID-19 case was published as a preprint in the medical journal medRxiv.
Reference:
- Persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection and intra-host evolution in association with advanced HIV infection
– (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.03.21258228v1)
Source: Medindia
