8 people as the entire control group... yeah I'd say "may" is the operative word in the title. My takeaway from long covid is that it's probably as severe as the much more deadly pandemic of the Spanish Flu. Considering there's now a newfound interest in "long flu", I think a spotlight has now been placed on the impact of severe respiratory illness. Whether that illness be covid or one of the any other respiratory illnesses.
They are studies, and frankly, without something like this, doing things like the appropriate power calculations and risk assessments for larger studies would be hard to do.
It's strange that the phrase "long covid" has suddenly jumped into our lexicon, when there has been a similar tiny minority of patients reporting similar symptoms from the other coronaviruses for decades now.
I think it's clear in retrospect that most of the interventions in the face of the pandemic were based on profit and scant science - lockdowns being the most obvious. But increased study and awareness of post-infection syndromes without the kind of high-brow dismissal that these patients have received up until now... well, that's certainly an acceptable silver lining.
hopefully we will get somewhere with these studies. The lack of solid research on a disease that affects millions (likely a good percentage undiagnosed) is really tough for patients - and myself really, as I've found i likely suffer from this.
Finding out about autonomic dysfunction and small fiber neuropathy as I researched my own fatigue and finding out I likely have this has been very challenging.
It's true, this is why there are so many government agencies focused on healthcare. The medical field lacks a healthy profit motive. Healthcare CEOs use their fiduciary responsibilities as an excuse and say they'll get sued if they don't exploit situations.
There was a SARS vaccine as far as back 2016 which could have changed everything but was ignored. Pharmaceutical execs told them they were, "waiting to see if it comes back yearly" first
Hard to treat symptoms with immunological conditions. I mean, there are vitamins and supplements, but noone is gonna generally hand out economy-sized bottles of controlled substances for exhaustion, etc.
These sorts of conditions are systemic, and the causes and ways of dealing with the accompanying syndromes are probably always going to be different from individual to individual (well, likely the exact physiological causes anyway).
There has been a shift - an understandable one, and one I by and large support (absent some edge cases) - to move away from causal language for observational studies.
Not to worry, there's three dozen commenters on the way to attest long COVID is definitely the source of their many nonspecific ailments that could easily be ascribed to various other illnesses.
Problem with those conditions and long COVID and CFS are generally similar: No really reliable guaranteed test for most of them, just a series of symptomatic diagnoses and years of ruling out conditions. No offense, but while some people might be full of crap, you sound really insensitive.
Most logical, rational adults would seek a second opinion, at least in places where those are available; they usually are. Interesting that I said 'some people' and you generalised.
FWIW, if my doctor were unfriendly enough, though, I might do that also.
There's no such thing as "long COVID" specifically. Any serious viral infection has the potential to cause sequalae in susceptible patients for reasons that are still not well understood. Some of those are detectible in lab tests to an extent but there's no single clear diagnostic test.
It's long as in persistent viral colonization, often in immune privileged areas where the virus can hide from the immune system.
One theory is that the immune system doesn't always produce a strong enough antibody response to flush the virus from all these areas but the truth is that's likely only a subset of total cases.
they are pretty well understood now with growing evidence of viral persistence in the gut and immune cells, and immune dysfunction causing autoantibodies.
they are also distinct from other conditions like ME/CFS or other sequelae although they may share overlapping symptoms. A lot of research is going into different PAIS post acute infection syndromes
Think of AIDS before the immune system dysfunction was found. That's where we are with Long Covid. One cause, a myriad of apparently unrelated effects--that's not how biology tends to work. Rather, there's something deeper we haven't found. And we certainly can't test for what we haven't found.
8 people as the entire control group... yeah I'd say "may" is the operative word in the title. My takeaway from long covid is that it's probably as severe as the much more deadly pandemic of the Spanish Flu. Considering there's now a newfound interest in "long flu", I think a spotlight has now been placed on the impact of severe respiratory illness. Whether that illness be covid or one of the any other respiratory illnesses.
Yeah, twelve patients and eight in the control group isn't really a study.
is a small proof of concept study not a study anymore? gastric biopsies aren’t exactly easy to obtain at scale.
They are studies, and frankly, without something like this, doing things like the appropriate power calculations and risk assessments for larger studies would be hard to do.
severity is only one factor in developing long covid.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
Funny that reactive arthritis has been around for decades but no one dares call it "long chlamydia" I guess it doesn't sell YouTube clicks as well.
Usually they add “chronic” like chronic Lyme disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_Lyme_disease
It's strange that the phrase "long covid" has suddenly jumped into our lexicon, when there has been a similar tiny minority of patients reporting similar symptoms from the other coronaviruses for decades now.
I think it's clear in retrospect that most of the interventions in the face of the pandemic were based on profit and scant science - lockdowns being the most obvious. But increased study and awareness of post-infection syndromes without the kind of high-brow dismissal that these patients have received up until now... well, that's certainly an acceptable silver lining.
hopefully we will get somewhere with these studies. The lack of solid research on a disease that affects millions (likely a good percentage undiagnosed) is really tough for patients - and myself really, as I've found i likely suffer from this.
Finding out about autonomic dysfunction and small fiber neuropathy as I researched my own fatigue and finding out I likely have this has been very challenging.
> as I researched my own fatigue and finding out I likely have this
Please don't do this. It's the medical equivalent of copy/pasting shit you don't understand from Stack Overflow.
Go see a doctor who has a degree and training.
If there's no test for it, then what is the doctor going to do for something as nebulous as long covid?
It's probably more profitable to treat symptoms.
It's true, this is why there are so many government agencies focused on healthcare. The medical field lacks a healthy profit motive. Healthcare CEOs use their fiduciary responsibilities as an excuse and say they'll get sued if they don't exploit situations.
There was a SARS vaccine as far as back 2016 which could have changed everything but was ignored. Pharmaceutical execs told them they were, "waiting to see if it comes back yearly" first
Hard to treat symptoms with immunological conditions. I mean, there are vitamins and supplements, but noone is gonna generally hand out economy-sized bottles of controlled substances for exhaustion, etc.
These sorts of conditions are systemic, and the causes and ways of dealing with the accompanying syndromes are probably always going to be different from individual to individual (well, likely the exact physiological causes anyway).
i noticed a thing with headlines like these: "x may cause y". Whenever it's "may" or "might", it's almost always meaningless
There has been a shift - an understandable one, and one I by and large support (absent some edge cases) - to move away from causal language for observational studies.
Not to worry, there's three dozen commenters on the way to attest long COVID is definitely the source of their many nonspecific ailments that could easily be ascribed to various other illnesses.
Problem with those conditions and long COVID and CFS are generally similar: No really reliable guaranteed test for most of them, just a series of symptomatic diagnoses and years of ruling out conditions. No offense, but while some people might be full of crap, you sound really insensitive.
If you suppose it's all malarkey and conjecture, what is the problem?
When your doctor says that you're wrong, do you accept his advice or tell him he should be more like Dale Carnegie?
Most logical, rational adults would seek a second opinion, at least in places where those are available; they usually are. Interesting that I said 'some people' and you generalised.
FWIW, if my doctor were unfriendly enough, though, I might do that also.
small study yes, meaningless no
Only the Sith deal in absolutes.
Wow mucosal innervation was around half in long covid patients - that's super worrying and would have nasty symptoms in practice.
The findings also support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 may cause structural nerve damage, which is perhaps the even bigger worry. :(
What kind of symptoms? I have insane stomach issues since early 2021 that only this year started to largely subside.
Is there a test for long covid?
There's no such thing as "long COVID" specifically. Any serious viral infection has the potential to cause sequalae in susceptible patients for reasons that are still not well understood. Some of those are detectible in lab tests to an extent but there's no single clear diagnostic test.
It's long as in persistent viral colonization, often in immune privileged areas where the virus can hide from the immune system.
One theory is that the immune system doesn't always produce a strong enough antibody response to flush the virus from all these areas but the truth is that's likely only a subset of total cases.
they are pretty well understood now with growing evidence of viral persistence in the gut and immune cells, and immune dysfunction causing autoantibodies.
they are also distinct from other conditions like ME/CFS or other sequelae although they may share overlapping symptoms. A lot of research is going into different PAIS post acute infection syndromes
not quite. A grab bag of biomarkers being validated in research labs across the USA though
Think of AIDS before the immune system dysfunction was found. That's where we are with Long Covid. One cause, a myriad of apparently unrelated effects--that's not how biology tends to work. Rather, there's something deeper we haven't found. And we certainly can't test for what we haven't found.
This is nothing like AIDS.
Physics Girl Dianna Cowern Living With Long COVID: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianna_Cowern