Dr. Klotman’s weekly video address focuses primarily on the 70th anniversary of the VA’s Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) program at Baylor College of Medicine. His only comment regarding COVID was the news that the CDC has formally issued revised guidance for isolation after COVID infection. The new guidance calls for isolating the affected person until they have been fever-free for 24-hours without having to take medicines (Paxlovid, aspirin, etc.) and are experiencing improvement in other symptoms.
In other COVID-related news, my friend and clinical colleague, AD Smith, sends me news that he encounters from sources that I do not usually read.
The first of these carried the results of a study of adult New Yorkers whose COVID antibody levels were followed far beyond the six months often reported to be the duration of COVID antibodies after vaccination or infection or both. That study found that COVID antibody levels diminished across time in two phases (a bi-phasic decline in antibodies). The first phase, lasting about six months, showed a rapid decline in antibody levels. The second phase, lasting a year or more, showed a plateau pattern – flat to very slowly declining antibody levels.
The second report was from an observational study that found that people taking anti-platelet treatment such as low-dose aspirin were less likely to wind up in the ICU if hospitalized for COVID. This kind of study isn’t the same as doing a double-blind study in which COVID patients are randomly assigned to receive anti-platelet treatment or placebo. So, such studies are best used to guide further and more rigorous studies. That’s how science progresses – without that kind of rigor, we wind up with low-quality studies that were common early during the COVID pandemic – later rightfully decried as “junk science.”