Have Long COVID? Newest Booster Vaccines May Help You
By
Debby Waldman
WebMD Health News
Dec. 5, 2022 – Jackie Dishner hasn’t been the same since June 2020, when COVID-19 robbed her of her energy level, ability to think clearly, and sense of taste and smell. Yet at 58, the Arizona writer is in no hurry to get the latest vaccine booster. “I just don’t want to risk getting any sicker,” she says.
Dishner has had two doses of vaccine plus two boosters. Each time, she had what regulators consider to be mild reactions, including a sore arm, slight fever, nausea, and body aches. Still, there’s some evidence that the newest booster, which protects against some of the later variants, could help people like Dishner in several ways, says Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, a clinical epidemiologist and prolific long COVID researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.
“A bivalent booster might actually [help with] your long COVID,” he says.
There may be other benefits. “What vaccines or current vaccine boosters do is reduce your risk of progression to severe COVID-19 illness,” Al-Aly says. “You are avoiding hospital stays or even worse; you’re avoiding potentially fatal outcomes after infection. And that’s really worth it. Who wants to be in the hospital this Christmas holiday?”
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-conversation=”none”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>I agree that it%u2019s not being taken seriously enough and hasn%u2019t since day 1. I still wear my mask. Just got the bivalent booster a few days ago. Have you tried the booster? I%u2019ve heard the vaccine can help with long Covid. How%u2019s that going btw? Hope you are starting to feel better!</p>— Mike (@FactsDoMatter4) <a href=”https://twitter.com/FactsDoMatter4/status/1572219073412599808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>September 20, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Each time people are infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, they have a fresh risk of not only getting severely ill or dying, but of developing long COVID, Al-Aly and colleagues found in a study published in the journal Nature Medicine in November. “If you dodged the bullet the first time and did not get long COVID after the first infection, if you get reinfected, you’re trying your luck again,” Al-Aly says. “I would advise people not to get reinfected, which is another reason to get the booster.”
In a recent review in the journal The Lancet e-Clinical Medicine, an international team of researchers looked at 11 studies that sought to find out if vaccines affected long COVID symptoms. Seven of those studies found that people’s symptoms improved after they were vaccinated, and four found that symptoms mostly remained the same. One found symptoms got worse in some patients.
Source: https://www.webmd.com/news/20221205/newest-booster-vaccines-may-help-with-long-covid?src=RSS_PUBLIC