British researchers have cured a 59-year-old man who was infected with COVID-19 for 411 days. The team analysed the genetic code of the variant of the virus to discover how to treat it. The man is believed to have been infected with the virus longer than anybody else in the world and survived.

The patient already had a weakened immune system after a kidney transplant when he first tested positive for COVID-19 in December 2020. Despite the symptoms reducing, he continually tested positive for the virus until January 2022.

In the study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, a team of researchers at Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London described how the man overcame his infection after more than 13 months.

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Persistent COVID infection unlike long COVID or repeated bouts of the disease can occur in a small number of patients who have an already weakened immune system. These patients can test positive for months or even years for the infection, according to Dr Luke Blagdon Snell, a physician specialising in infectious diseases at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.

How was he cured?

Medics at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals used genetic analysis to determine that the unnamed man had an early B.1 variant of the original Wuhan strain. This strain had since been overtaken by Alpha, Delta and Omicron variants.

Once they identified the variant, the researchers gave him a combination of casirivimab and imdevimab monoclonal antibodies from Regeneron, the same drug cocktail that helped Donald Trump to fight the illness.

Like most other antibody treatments, this treatment is no longer used because it is ineffective against newer variants of the virus such as Omicron.

The team said they are not aware of any other documented case of a person being cured after such a long infection, as per a Sky News report.

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Earlier, the same team had treated a patient with an underlying health condition who died after testing positive for 505 days. Genetic testing showed that the patients had not been reinfected and it was a continual persistent infection in both cases.

In another case of a 60-year old man who was infected for months, the team had used two antiviral treatments Paxlovid and remdesivir, which had not been used previously together. The patient miraculously cleared. Dr Snell said, “Perhaps this is now the avenue for how we treat these very difficult persistent infections," and added that this treatment may not be used for normal COVID cases, NDTV reported.

The team has called for more research into antibody treatments for persistent COVID cases and campaigners have called for a new medication called the Evusheld to be made available in the UK and Europe to treat them. People with weakened immune systems are still at risk and there is a need to protect them.

(Edited by : Jerome Anthony)