CROI to Present New Insights on Long COVID Risk, HIV Cure

A virologist and physician-scientist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Annie Antar, MD, PhD, will be presenting research on long COVID and viral rebound and clearance at the 2025 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, taking place March 9-12 in San Francisco. Her work focuses on identifying biomarkers and potential causes of long COVID, leveraging her expertise in viral reservoirs from HIV cure research.

In this interview, she previews findings she will be presenting from 2 large studies—Test Us at Home and Test Us at Home Daily—that identified areas in the US with high SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates. More than 7000 participants were enrolled, who regularly self-collected nasal swabs. A retrospective analysis was conducted among the individuals who tested positive (> 400), and their long COVID status was based on World Health Organization criteria. These individuals had documented acute infection, viral clearance rates, and viral rebound, or testing positive after initially testing negative.

Primary findings of this research are that slower viral clearance was strongly associated with development of long COVID, having more symptoms equated with slower viral clearance, and a potential link was found between viral rebound and higher risk of developing long COVID.

“For the people who did report having long COVID, having a higher slope—so that means a slower viral clearance rate—was strongly associated with having long COVID later,” she explains. “And it actually had kind of a dose-response curve, where the people who had more symptoms had the slower clearance.”

In addition to her own research, Antar says she is looking forward to Monday’s plenary personation on HIV cure from Ole S. Søgaard, PhD, professor, Department of Clinical Medicine/Infectious Diseases, Aarhus University; conference sessions on long COVID, including the Wednesday plenary presentation on long COVID from Roger Paredes, MD, PhD, head of the Infectious Diseases Department at the Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol; and sessions on viral rebound, HIV, and neuropathogenesis and proviral landscapes.