Covid-19: a second infection could put you at risk for a more severe form of the disease

To date, no drug or vaccine has yet been discovered and placed on the market to treat or prevent the risk of infection from the Covid-19 virus.

Several studies have already mentioned the fact that reinfection is possible, and that immunity to Covid-19 may not be definitive.

Recent works, relayed in the British Medical Journal, support these hypotheses, revealing that a second infection of a person could significantly increase the risk of developing a severe form of the disease.

Covid-19: immunity and risk of reinfection

This reaction during reinfection with Sars-CoV-2 is, according to Luca Cegolon and his team, due to “an immunological mechanism known as the facilitation of infection by antibodies”.

According to the authors, this immunological phenomenon of predisposition to a severe form of the disease could occur when the infected patient has already been affected by a previous viral infection, which may be the Sars-CoV-2 virus, but also any other strain of coronavirus, or even “potentially by other respiratory viruses”.

A predisposition to a severe form of the disease in the event of a second infection?

We know, as the Italian researchers point out, that “The death rate for COVID-19 would increase from 5.6% to 10.5% in the presence of any comorbidity (hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular illnesses, cancer and / or chronic respiratory diseases) and increases significantly and gradually after age 50, although the severe form of the disease increases linearly at any age. “

A predisposition to severe forms of the disease could therefore also be possible, especially in people who have been infected for the first time, but asymptomatically, or with mild symptoms (fever, cough, sore throat, fatigue, etc.), such as this is the case for a large part of the population.

If these findings are confirmed by in vivo studies, “this hypothesis could have relevant implications for the treatment of severe forms of COVID-19, but the possibility of producing an effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 could be questioned”, explain the specialists.

Source :femmeactuelle.fr