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04 Jul 2022

Setting it Straight: Virus persistence and Long COVID: DNA and RNA viruses

Last week, we looked at the ubiquitous herpesviruses (HVs) – large DNA viruses that are known to persist for life in us, to ask whether at least some of the manifestations of Long COVID (LC) might reflect HV reactivation during SARS-CoV-2 infection (#111). It is indeed the case that both the incidence of obvious HV-induced (#111) clinical manifestations, like cold sores (HSV1) or shingles (VZV), plus the level of PCR product (for CMV and EBV) detected in swabs from the oropharynx, can increase in the acute phase of COVID-19.