{"id":11898,"date":"2026-04-29T18:31:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11898"},"modified":"2026-04-29T18:31:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:31:50","slug":"rheumatic-disease-drugs-help-covid-virus-stick-around-longer-study-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/04\/29\/rheumatic-disease-drugs-help-covid-virus-stick-around-longer-study-suggests\/","title":{"rendered":"Rheumatic Disease Drugs Help COVID Virus Stick Around Longer, Study Suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/rheumatology\/generalrheumatology\/121023?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2026-04-29&amp;mh=07f73d99b2b546c079b0b5a2312d87b1&amp;zdee=gAAAAABm4uVVa0noffRIJqPd2rsKKgBm5ZURWXfuJljHxkA5SxaiDrFhpdNSLVuatrcndghIUJbdB8i3tZ00Sf5MYAfngC1RuyQP-n6FrYFzvROxn-4_blA%3D&amp;utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Evening%20-%20Randomized%202026-04-29&amp;utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition\">MedPageToday<\/a> Lengthy viral antigen persistence far more common, regardless of prior vaccination. Drugs commonly used to treat systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARDs) may keep the SARS-CoV-2 circulating after COVID-19 infection in patients with these conditions, with researchers documenting substantially increased viral antigen persistence compared with other post-COVID patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tests for 40% of SARDs patients remained positive for at least one SARS-CoV-2 antigen 3 months after infection in one prospectively assembled cohort, compared with 17.5% of COVID-19 patients without SARDs from a separate prospective study, according to Naomi Patel, MD, MPH, of the Mass General Brigham health system in Boston, and colleagues.<br><br><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MedPageToday Lengthy viral antigen persistence far more common, regardless of prior vaccination. Drugs commonly used to treat systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARDs) may keep the SARS-CoV-2 circulating after COVID-19 infection in patients with these conditions, with researchers documenting substantially increased viral antigen persistence compared with other post-COVID patients. Tests for 40% of SARDs patients remained [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11899,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11898\/revisions\/11899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}