Sometimes research confirms what you already think you observe. In this case, that vaccination against covid-19 also protects against the risk of post-covid syndrome. According to a meta-analysis cum systematic review of 41 trials (n = 860,783) by Vasiliki Tsampasian cs, it halves that risk compared to unvaccinated people who contract covid-19. The results can be found in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Chance of long-term complaints
The researchers also found the known factors that actually contribute to an increased risk of long-term complaints, such as obesity, smoking, and comorbidities such as asthma, COPD, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, immunosuppression, anxiety and depression. Patients who were hospitalized during their acute covid infection, women and those over 40 are also at increased risk of the syndrome post-covid-19. However, according to Tsampasian et al., there is increasing evidence that vaccination also reduces the risk of post-covid syndrome in all these categories of patients.
Incidentally, since the arrival of the omikron variant, the chance of post-covid syndrome has been lower anyway – also something that many people believe they see in practice. For example, research conducted in the UK, Spain and Italy and published in The Lancet Oncology shows that the risk of post-covid syndrome among cancer patients fell from about 17 percent in 2021 to 6 percent now, and that this is nicely related to the dominance of the omikron variant. Recent research among healthy Swiss hospital workers describes a similar pattern.
Intrinsic property of omikron
In Science, Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale School of Medicine, says there may be an intrinsic property of omikron that lowers the likelihood of the syndrome. Which that is, remains speculation for the time being: it must have something to do with the way in which the various virus variants infiltrate the body. Earlier variants seem to spread to vital organs more often than omikron. Such a spread may not always cause symptoms in an acute infection, Iwasaki suspects, but it could make someone more likely to get post-covid syndrome.
