18) Link to the preprint (not yet peer-reviewed): Painter et al. 2026. Persistently activated virus-specific CD8 T cells indicate antigen-driven immune aberrations in long COVID. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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17) Overall, it’s an impressive paper that will likely receive more follow-up. The authors argue that these markers help to stratify participants in treatment trials to identify those most likely to benefit from interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 persistence or EBV reactivation.

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16) Another caveat: the data reported are LC samples and some samples come from the same patient. The paper doesn’t clarify how this dependence was taken care of in the statistics (but I assume it wasn’t overlooked given the many researchers involved).

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15) Non-spike SARS-CoV-2 responses also showed no effect. Another concern is that the findings could reflect batch effects and shifts in experimental conditions. I noticed for example that being in the LIINC cohort had a bigger effect than having LC or not.

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14) One limitation is that the study doesn’t prove that these T-cells are pathogenic and not just a harmless remnant of past infection. They don’t for example show a correlation between having these cells and symptom severity in Long Covid.

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