Coevolving Mutations in Chronic SARS-CoV-2 Infections

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been marked by two outstanding features that have had major impacts on global public health: the repeated emergence and growth of highly divergent saltation variants with no known close relatives and the development of adverse health effects extending beyond the period of acute infection, called long Covid, in a proportion of the population. Chronic infections in immunocompromised hosts are the most likely explanation for the emergence of saltation variants, and some evidence indicates that viral persistence contributes to long Covid. Knowledge of intrahost evolution during prolonged SARS-CoV-2 infection is therefore vital for understanding the global evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and for deciphering the nature of long Covid and promising avenues for treatment. We assembled a collection of over 3000 independent, full-length SARS-CoV-2 sequences deriving from posited or confirmed chronic infections. We describe 14 distinct mutation patterns (MPs) that repeatedly appear in these sequences--each involving mutations in multiple genomic regions--including four CD8 T cell-escape MPs and two MPs that represent adaptation to tissue compartments outside the upper-respiratory tract. The existence of these MPs promises new insights into the life cycle and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and the nature of persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection.