Does the COVID Vaccine Help with Long COVID Symptoms?
Written by Leslie K. Hughes
Medically reviewed by Dr. Monique White-Dominguez
Long COVID is no joke. According to Penn State College of Medicine researchers, over 50% of people who have become infected with COVID-19 will suffer from post-COVID symptoms, known as long COVID.
These symptoms can vary greatly, and scientists are working to determine why the symptoms may be so different from one person to the next.
To find ways to alleviate the widespread problem of long COVID, studies have been conducted to see whether the vaccine has any effect on long-COVID symptoms. The results of those studies are mixed, but one study, in particular, shows that the vaccine may help to reduce the risk of issues with long-COVID.
Read on to learn more about long COVID and whether the vaccine may be able to alleviate some of the problems associated with this acute respiratory syndrome.
What is long COVID?
According to the CDC, “post-COVID conditions are a wide range of new, returning, or ongoing health problems people can experience four or more weeks after first being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.” And these conditions are more commonly known as “long COVID.”
Some of the symptoms that someone suffering from long COVID may experience include:
Shortness of breath
Fatigue
Worsening of symptoms after physical activities
Worsening of symptoms after mental activities
Cough
Chest pain
Stomach pain
Headache
Heart palpitations
Joint pain
Diarrhea
Trouble sleeping
Fever
Mood changes
Changes in smell or taste
Changes in the menstrual cycle
Long COVID does not just happen to those who had a severe case of COVID. Instead, the CDC states that long COVID “symptoms can happen to anyone who has had COVID-19, even if the illness was mild, or if they had no initial symptoms.”
What causes long COVID?
Scientists are hard at work to determine what may be the cause for long COVID, but so far all they have are theories.
Some think that the virus may be hiding somewhere in the body and is thus causing longer-term damage to nerves. Or that maybe the remnants of the virus keep the immune system weak, which causes the symptoms to flare up. It may even be that the virus affects the immune system long after it’s gone, and causes it to essentially attack itself.
More research is occurring to determine whether it’s a different possibility – whether it is chronic inflammation post-COVID that is causing the problems.
There is still much work being done to find the root cause of long COVID. And once that is determined, proper treatment can be implemented to help patients suffering from post-COVID symptoms.
Does the COVID vaccine help with long COVID?
A recent study conducted by researchers in Israel may provide some hope that we can answer this question with a “yes.” The definite answer is still to be determined, but this Israeli study showed that “people who have had both SARS-CoV-2 infection and doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were much less likely to report any of a range of common long-COVID symptoms than were people who were unvaccinated when infected.”
The study involved epidemiologist Michael Edelstein and his colleagues asking over 3,000 people between July and November 2021 whether they were suffering from the most common symptoms associated with long COVID. It is key to note that the people involved in the study self-reported their vaccination status.
And from that study, Edelstein determined that fully vaccinated people who had become infected with COVID-19 were 54% less likely to report headaches post-COVID, 64% less likely to report fatigue, and 68% less likely to report muscle and joint pain than the unvaccinated study participants.
However, according to the CDC, “Although media articles have reported that some people with post-COVID conditions say their symptoms improved after being vaccinated, studies are needed to determine the effects of vaccination on post-COVID conditions.”
To provide a confident and accurate answer to the question “Does the COVID vaccine help with long COVID symptoms?”, more research needs to be done.
