Overview
People living with HIV are 2-4x more likely to get Long COVID.
As we saw with the emergence of HIV/AIDS, pandemics expose the critical need for large-scale change in healthcare, public health, and unjust structures that bring inequitable risks of illness, suffering, and mortality.
Even as the COVID and HIV pandemics continue to claim lives, we are pressured to return to a “business as normal” that has never centered the needs of disabled people and people with complex chronic conditions. Pandemics disproportionately impact already marginalized communities, including Black, Brown and indigenous people, immigrants, queer and trans people, older people, poor and low-income people, those who are imprisoned and those without access to stable housing.
We need to keep talking about the intersections between HIV and Long COVID – and other infection-associated chronic illnesses like ME/CFS, MCAS, and POTS – and we need to keep organizing, advocating, and fighting for health justice.
Why might people with HIV be at higher risk for Long COVID?
Possible factors might include:
- More severe COVID-19 (especially if viremic or low CD+4 T cell count)
- Chronic comorbid conditions (diabetes, heart disease, neurocognitive disorder, mental health conditions, substance use)
- Socioeconomic factors (income, food security, healthcare access)
- HIV virus-specific activity (viral control, medication regimen)
- HIV-associated immune dysfunction & different immune responses to COVID-19 infection
- Baseline inflammation due to chronic HIV infection
Living with HIV and concerned you might have Long COVID?
Tips for talking to your medical providers:
- “Since I had COVID, I am experiencing [symptom], which I did not have before I had COVID.” “
- “My [symptom] is much worse than before I had COVID.”
- “Do you think I could have Long COVID?”
- “Are there any tests that you think I should do to make sure there is nothing else going on?
Source: presentation by Dr. Michael Peluso from our 7/17/23 webinar
Resources
- People with HIV may be more at risk of Long COVID. Here’s what we know.
- Getting Long COVID care when you are living with HIV
Webinars
- Trust Yourself & Take Care of Each Other: Navigating COVID & Long-COVID as HIV Long-term Survivors co-presented with The Reunion Project
- Supporting Community & Ourselves: The U.S. HIV Community in the Time of COVID, Long COVID & MPV (Monkeypox)
- HIV, Long COVID & COVID: Support, Info, Reflection
Additional Reading
- Long COVID more common in people with HIV | aidsmap
- More evidence that long COVID is more common in people with HIV | aidsmap
- Long COVID in people living with HIV | Michael Peluso and Annukka Antar
- HIV may increase the risk of Long Covid. Why aren’t major advocacy groups addressing it? | The Sick Times
- Resourcing the HIV Community (report)
Social posts
- World AIDS Day (12/1/24)
- HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day (6/5/24)
- Reposts of collab with ACT UP NY: People living with HIV are at greater risk of Long COVID (7/18/24)
- Source list:
- Long COVID Definition | National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (2024)
- Long COVID and Significant Activity Limitation Among Adults, by Age — United States, June 1–13, 2022, to June 7–19, 2023 | CDC – MMW
- SARS-CoV-2 Reinfections and Long COVID in the Post-Omicron Phase of the Pandemic | Institutional Journal of Molecular Sciences
- More evidence that long COVID is more common in people with HIV | aidsmap
- COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines: Special Considerations in People With HIV | NIH
- Long COVID: rheumatologic/musculoskeletal symptoms in hospitalized COVID-19 survivors at 3 and 6 months | National Library of Medicine – PMC
- HIV and inflammatory markers are associated with persistent COVID‐19 symptoms | National Library of Medicine – PMC
- Vaccines for Moderately to Severely Immunocompromised People | CDC
- Vaccines for Moderately to Severely Immunocompromised People | CDC
- Guidance for COVID-19 and People With HIV | HIV.gov
- https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/covid-19.html
- Association of Treatment With Nirmatrelvir and the Risk of Post–COVID-19 Condition | Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacology | JAMA Internal Medicine
- Metformin-COVID Handout | Parsemus.org
- Fastlab- Rapid and PCR Test Delivery | FastLab
- COVID-19: Express Testing | NYC Health
- Managing COVID-19 in People With HIV (Paxlovid-HIV) | NIH
- COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines: Special Considerations in People With HIV | NIH
- Characteristics and impact of Long Covid: Findings from an online survey | National Library of Medicine – PMC
This page is a developing resource – please send suggestions of additional resources to [email protected].
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