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(CNN)   Long COVID? That's crazy   (cnn.com) divider line
19
    More: Interesting, Immune system, Psychology, Asthma, Anxiety, Medicine, Psychiatry, Mental disorder, types of psychological distress  
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1477 clicks; posted to STEM » on 18 Sep 2022 at 11:26 AM (27 weeks ago)   |   Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook



19 Comments     (+0 »)
View Voting Results: Smartest and Funniest
 
Loren
2022-09-18 11:37:42 AM  
In other words, a system already closer to the edge is easier to push over the edge.
 
lilbjorn
2022-09-18 11:39:13 AM  
Ugh.  This makes me anxious and depressed.
 
luna1580 [TotalFark]
2022-09-18 12:06:09 PM  
so people who "excessively worry" about getting covid are more likely to develop long covid? does that make long covid psychosomatic?
 
Unsung_Hero
2022-09-18 12:12:17 PM  

luna1580: so people who "excessively worry" about getting covid are more likely to develop long covid? does that make long covid psychosomatic?


No, it means persistent stress weakens your immune system and makes you more susceptible to damage.
 
talkyournonsense
2022-09-18 12:21:47 PM  

Unsung_Hero: luna1580: so people who "excessively worry" about getting covid are more likely to develop long covid? does that make long covid psychosomatic?

No, it means persistent stress weakens your immune system and makes you more susceptible to damage.


It sounds like it could be either or both because we still don't really know shiat about it. Correlation isn't causation.

I didn't worry at all. I took precautions but accepted most people would get it. I still have brain fog and super bad asthma months later. So I don't fit this narrative.
 
Unsung_Hero
2022-09-18 12:27:50 PM  

talkyournonsense: I didn't worry at all. I took precautions but accepted most people would get it. I still have brain fog and super bad asthma months later. So I don't fit this narrative.


This is where a solid understanding of probability and statistics comes into play.  The theory would be that stress increases the probability of long COVID, not that stress makes long COVID certain.  Beyond that, as stress would only be one factor (along side exposure and the unique properties of your immune system including augmentation by vaccine), lack of stress isn't a defense against long COVID.

So you still fit the narrative perfectly.  And my sympathies as well, by the way.  The probability of ending up in your current circumstances would have been a lot lower if everyone had behaved like responsible adults.
 
Izunbacol [TotalFark]
2022-09-18 12:30:40 PM  

luna1580: so people who "excessively worry" about getting covid are more likely to develop long covid? does that make long covid psychosomatic?


I suspect in the end we'll find that a small subset of people have legitimate biologically-based "Long Covid," due to exacerbations of preexisting medical conditions (e.g. already had lung damage from radon, smoke, asbestos, silica, etc. and COVID pushed them over the edge into more significant symptoms) while others are largely suffering from physical manifestations of anxiety and depression.

The fact that COVID has a long... half life guess is the best term... it hits sharply, and you keep feeling better but not 100% as you slowly creep back to normal.
 
Unsung_Hero
2022-09-18 12:36:10 PM  

Izunbacol: I suspect in the end we'll find that a small subset of people have legitimate biologically-based "Long Covid," due to exacerbations of preexisting medical condition


We know COVID causes micro-clots in your blood, and this in turn causes (cumulative) organ damage.  Anything in your body that can't recover from that damage (which is most of it) is going to have reduced function permanently.

No pre-existing conditions required.
 
Theaetetus
2022-09-18 12:44:18 PM  

Unsung_Hero: Izunbacol: I suspect in the end we'll find that a small subset of people have legitimate biologically-based "Long Covid," due to exacerbations of preexisting medical condition

We know COVID causes micro-clots in your blood, and this in turn causes (cumulative) organ damage.  Anything in your body that can't recover from that damage (which is most of it) is going to have reduced function permanently.

No pre-existing conditions required.


Yep, and beta-amyloid plaques, like Alzheimer's and CTE patients.
 
Stibium
2022-09-18 12:45:23 PM  

Unsung_Hero: luna1580: so people who "excessively worry" about getting covid are more likely to develop long covid? does that make long covid psychosomatic?

No, it means persistent stress weakens your immune system and makes you more susceptible to damage.


It could also be said that people who "excessively worry" about it are more aware of it in general, and are therefore more likely to acknowledge symptoms or even be able to accurately do so. Consider, if you didn't realize what brain fog is you'd be tempted to explain how the symptoms you were feeling in terms of things you understand, like passing it off as transient tiredness. Don't you sometimes feel so tired you can't think? So how can you tell the difference between being tired and this nebulous brain fog?

That's the difficult part of the neurological symptoms since the concept of systemic brain damage has received relatively no attention. To date, has almost exclusively been relegated to other individual diagnoses as opposed to a systemic umbrella term. Let's say that the doctor is only aware of using a hammer, so when you tell him how screwed up your mind is all he wants to do is hammer you with antidepressants. You probably will achieve little improvement following such regiment, because you don't suffer neurotransmitter imbalance as a primary cause of symptoms, but rather brain damage.

You see the same difficulty with treating any individual facet of neurological post-covid syndrome, to the exclusion of treating it like a case of systemic constellations of symptoms all occurring together. Thankfully with the problem becoming so prevalent now it can no longer be ignored, and doctors are now educating themselves about how it works and manifests itself. Unfortunately, the treatment options are pretty much nonexistent at this point. On the gripping hand, treatment drugs that do arrive will all but certainly be useful for treating a variety of other disease like Alzheimer's and dementia.

Of course such light of hope doesn't matter if we keep infecting ourselves so many times that society as we know it collapses all around us. How effective do you think our treatment research will go when everyone has varying degrees of brain damage? Probably not very well...
 
Jack Sabbath
2022-09-18 1:25:32 PM  
I have depression but I'm fully vaccinated and I did get COVID, but I didn't get long COVID, so do I still have to worry if I get COVID again that I will get long COVID or if I've already had it do I not need to worry?

Fark user imageView Full Size
 
Oneiros [OhFark]
2022-09-18 1:45:52 PM  

talkyournonsense: I didn't worry at all. I took precautions but accepted most people would get it. I still have brain fog and super bad asthma months later. So I don't fit this narrative.


It took me about 30 months to shake off the chronic fatigue and brain fog.  (Although it might've been long whooping cough, as there was 6 months of coughing at throwing up at the start)

I'm currently in an NIH study of long Covid: https://recovercovid.org
 
Oneiros [OhFark]
2022-09-18 1:51:30 PM  

Jack Sabbath: I have depression but I'm fully vaccinated and I did get COVID, but I didn't get long COVID, so do I still have to worry if I get COVID again that I will get long COVID or if I've already had it do I not need to worry?

[Fark user image image 360x360]


Still possible to get it.  They don't fully know yet why it can happen, and the Omicron variants aren't really affected by past infections by other variants (including earlier Omicron variants)
 
AlphaG33k
2022-09-18 3:07:51 PM  
It's just the flu. Long Covid means they are just lazy after getting the flu. We need to cut benefits to get these people working again.

We need to cut health benefits to stop the worrying.

We need to cut unemployment benefits to stop the worrying.

More cuts, more productivity.

We need to cut pay to keep people from quitting.

More cuts!

No paid sick leave!

No covid benefits!

no short term disability!

no long term disability for covid!

want long term disability? lose an arm, lose a leg, otherwise, STFU and GBTW.
 
talkyournonsense
2022-09-18 3:53:22 PM  

Oneiros: talkyournonsense: I didn't worry at all. I took precautions but accepted most people would get it. I still have brain fog and super bad asthma months later. So I don't fit this narrative.

It took me about 30 months to shake off the chronic fatigue and brain fog.  (Although it might've been long whooping cough, as there was 6 months of coughing at throwing up at the start)

I'm currently in an NIH study of long Covid: https://recovercovid.org


Sorry to hear that.
And thank you for helping further the research
 
DON.MAC [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2022-09-18 8:03:41 PM  
For more than 3 decades I've thought that asthma and allergies were caused by something like the common cold but with a different time factor. I came to that conclusion by looking how allergies spread through families and noticed it looked exactly like how common colds did except where a cold would spread in two weeks, the allergies took two years.  If it is spread by a cold with little or no initial symptoms, I don't think it would be found yet.
 
snocone [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2022-09-18 8:51:06 PM  
If you think you might have symptoms of the Long Covid talk to your health provider about LDN, Low Dose Naltrexone. Google it.
Caution, it is off label for the medication, the drug is OTC but at the wrong dosage. You need a knowledgeable pharmacist to make up your regimen.

Sorry, no solid science behind this yet.
 
backhand.slap.of.reason
2022-09-19 1:58:07 AM  

snocone: If you think you might have symptoms of the Long Covid talk to your health provider about LDN, Low Dose Naltrexone. Google it.
Caution, it is off label for the medication, the drug is OTC but at the wrong dosage. You need a knowledgeable pharmacist to make up your regimen.

Sorry, no solid science behind this yet.


Fark user imageView Full Size


Science is just fine. Naltrexone metabolizes bradykinnin. Bradykinnin connects the RAAS to the KKS. The KKS contributes to what this diagram describes as Extrinsic Pathway mediated Terminal Pathway activation.

The Terminal Pathway produces membrane attack complexes.  When enough MACs are deposited on the surface of a viral envelope, that envelope pops, spilling the innards into the extracellular fluid where they go on to provoke Complement Hyperactivation via a durable MASP-2 to N-protein complex.

Complement Hyperactivation may sound like no big deal, but this is how SARS, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2 provoke Acute Lung Injury.  Cobra Venom mimics Complement Hyperactivation via the fluid phase C5 Convertase CVFBb.  It's bad news.

Unlike SARS and MERS, SARS-CoV-2 is able to invade the intravascular extracellular fluid thanks to the broad tissue tropism of its spike.  Complement Hyperactivation in the intravascular ECF depletes Negative Regulators of Complement Factors H and I. CFH and CFI are also regulators of the ADAMSTS13-VWF axis.  When CFI and CFH are depleted, VWF multimers lengthen, making platelets stickier. This is why Covid is way more clotty than its distant cousin MERS or fraternal twin SARS.

Aside from antivirals, any successful long Covid therapy will have to be capable of reducing the background level of Complement to be effective.  Naltrexone fits this bill, but only just barely, and really only for those with dysfunction arising from what the diagram calls the Extrinsic Pathway.  Those with complementopathies lying along other pathways will probably not respond to Naltrexone, but it is pretty innocuous and thus definitely worth a try provided the patient isn't on opioids.

Here's a really good introduction to the Complement System with a focus on Negative Regulators of Complement.  I suggest that everyone with Long Covid learn about the Complement System to avoid getting their culos taken by snakeoil sellers that really want Covid to be about whatever it is they're selling.  If it's not antiviral or anti-complement, it might as well be palliative care.  Don't get me wrong, if your doctor tells you to take an anticoagulant, you should almost certainly heed that advice, but if they start talking about cytokines or graded exercise therapy, you'd probably be better off with a different doctor--one without orange feet and feathers.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109904/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
 
snocone [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2022-09-19 7:50:33 AM  

backhand.slap.of.reason: snocone: If you think you might have symptoms of the Long Covid talk to your health provider about LDN, Low Dose Naltrexone. Google it.
Caution, it is off label for the medication, the drug is OTC but at the wrong dosage. You need a knowledgeable pharmacist to make up your regimen.

Sorry, no solid science behind this yet.

[Fark user image 425x425]

Science is just fine. Naltrexone metabolizes bradykinnin. Bradykinnin connects the RAAS to the KKS. The KKS contributes to what this diagram describes as Extrinsic Pathway mediated Terminal Pathway activation.

The Terminal Pathway produces membrane attack complexes.  When enough MACs are deposited on the surface of a viral envelope, that envelope pops, spilling the innards into the extracellular fluid where they go on to provoke Complement Hyperactivation via a durable MASP-2 to N-protein complex.

Complement Hyperactivation may sound like no big deal, but this is how SARS, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2 provoke Acute Lung Injury.  Cobra Venom mimics Complement Hyperactivation via the fluid phase C5 Convertase CVFBb.  It's bad news.

Unlike SARS and MERS, SARS-CoV-2 is able to invade the intravascular extracellular fluid thanks to the broad tissue tropism of its spike.  Complement Hyperactivation in the intravascular ECF depletes Negative Regulators of Complement Factors H and I. CFH and CFI are also regulators of the ADAMSTS13-VWF axis.  When CFI and CFH are depleted, VWF multimers lengthen, making platelets stickier. This is why Covid is way more clotty than its distant cousin MERS or fraternal twin SARS.

Aside from antivirals, any successful long Covid therapy will have to be capable of reducing the background level of Complement to be effective.  Naltrexone fits this bill, but only just barely, and really only for those with dysfunction arising from what the diagram calls the Extrinsic Pathway.  Those with complementopathies lying along other pathways will probably not respond to Naltrexone, but it is pretty innocuous and t ...


This is good, solid science. Science I was lamenting is the study of large group of patients to determine efficacy of treatment. This is more a treatment of symptomology, not necessarily a "cure" of infection.
 
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