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Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

medrxiv.org

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Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#101

Post by plank_time »

lima wrote: post #24
plank_time wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the percentage of people who suffered any long term brain effects? And did they do the same study against people who got the flu and other diseases?

> And did they do the same study against people who got the flu and other diseases? Does this matter?

The flu causes myocarditis in a similar way that COVID has been reported to cause in children. Having a comparison of rates of issues would be useful so as to figure out if it’s important or not.

The same goes for this reported brain issue. If it is a real issue, comparing against other known issues will tell us how dangerous it is.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#102

Post by ekianjo »

dboreham wrote: post #65
ekianjo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we have real data showing that there are long term effects from getting full blown COVID. As in, 90% (probably more because asymptomatic people are never tested) of people actually have no symptoms at all and seem to go along fine with it? Or are you talking about something else?

Study suggests the "90% who are fine" may not all be fine.

> Our general approach in this study was therefore as follows: (i) utilise brain imaging data from 782 participants who have visited the UKB imaging centres for two scanning sessions, on average 3 years apart, with 394 of these having contracted COVID-19 in between their two scans;

Have they established with certainty that in the control group there were no-one with COVID19 infection in the first place?

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#103

Post by buildbot »

goodoldneon wrote: post #13
wombatmobile wrote: post #2

This sounds alarming: > There is strong evidence for brain-related pathologies in COVID-19, some of which could be a consequence of viral neurotropism. This doesn't: > We further compared COVID-19 patients who had been hospitalised (n=15) with those who had not (n=379), and while results were not significant, we found comparatively similar findings to the COVID-19 vs control group comparison What are the quantitative…

Kind of a tangent, but I get frustrated when researchers publicly release results when one of their groups have a ridiculously small sample size. It’s irresponsible to release results based on 15 people

They had over 700 people total, 50% control and 50% infected; which they break down earlier in the same paragraph. The 15 people are those who are hospitalized and the abstract literally says the results from that small group aren’t significant.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#104

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

subroutine wrote: post #45

Looking at the scatter plot [1] from their most statistically significant finding (parahippocampal gray matter change), the effect size is tiny, and the variance is large. Nearly half the case participants had more gray matter after getting covid. [1] https://i.ibb.co/5YcxJHH/EDB20654-900-A-427-C-8063-B5-FA667-...

So the preferred headline here would have been "covid can increase brain matter":) Although of course with that kind of stats I'd prefer no headline at all.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#105

Post by takeda »

graeme wrote: post #85
pepperberg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of looking up the original video (e.g. by using the watch id), you immediately write it off as "crackpot claims" because some unknown authority at YouTube removed it, citing broad community guidelines. Maybe we should stick to your words from 4 days ago: "Science reporting is terrible and the general education system doesn't teach rational skepticism, it teaches unconditional trust of intellectual authority."…

In my experience on forums, when someone makes a grand contrarian claim (“vaccines are risky”) and then cites a video without explaining why it is relevant or summing it up, the claims indeed have extremely high odds of being crackpot claims.

All those videos are repeating the same thing over and over, with some changes (some that are even contradicting themselves).

People who are into it they hear it so many times that it seem so obvious to them, but whenever they try to explain it to someone else themselves they are realizing they have difficulty, because everything is falling apart. They think it's because they aren't the experts so they link to videos instead. They don't realize that they have problem explaining it, because the argument is very weak, and if you think about it, it doesn't make much sense.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#106

Post by username90 »

Stress reduces brain volume in similar areas, this effect could just be that people got extremely stressed out from having caught the pandemic virus. I'd like to see these studies take stress into account before I believe that covid hurts your brain.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4677120/

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#107

Post by takeda »

username90 wrote: post #69
TaupeRanger wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video you linked is removed.for violating guidelines, which I'm guessing means it had a conspiratorial slant. Discussion does not have to include unsupported or crackpot claims to be "inclusive".

I am pro vaccine, but youtube moderators are not subject matter experts, they are unskilled volunteers with very simple guidelines such as (made up rule by me, I don't fully know): "remove any video discouraging people from getting vaccinated". Therefore youtube removing a specific video doesn't say anything about the quality of its content, just that some random guy thought it violated the guidelines he was given. F…

YouTube is removing things for liability reasons, that's it, because if some event that caused people to die or have long lasting health effects, would be linked to them and they would be proven they knew and did nothing they would be open to lawsuits.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#108

Post by throwkeep »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #4

I wish I could get people that are avoiding the COVID vaccine “because we don’t know what the long term effects are” to realize that we have real data showing that there are long term effects from getting full blown COVID. You don’t want a tiny piece of mRNA but you want the whole organism reproducing in your body? The whole genome and all the proteins made?

There are valid concerns and a difficult risk benefit analysis for some cohorts, I think. What are your thoughts on this? Put yourself in her shoes:

"I held off on a COVID vaccine because I wanted to wait for data with positive signals for both pregnancy in the short term and long-run fertility. I’m trying to get pregnant, and those are the two things I care about most.

Vaccine data is so politicized that it’s actually somewhat difficult to find full studies, results discussions or data sets as a layman, because every search term redirects you to “yes, get vaccinated right now, your concerns are merely ignorance”

The other study that concerns me shows that the vaccine’s lipid nanoparticles— which carry the RNA instructions for the spike protein — move beyond the deltoid muscle they’re injected into and accumulate in other tissues, and seem to accumulate in ovarian tissue preferentially.

That study looked at a very small sample, but given what we think we know about the spike protein — it likely causes some degree of tissue damage on its own, independent of the virus — it’s something that definitely demands further study

Anyway, I feel like I need to come clean at this point. For a long time I was avoiding the vaccine because I wanted to hold out for more data. Now I’m actively choosing not to get it because what I’ve seen is providing the opposite of a positive safety signal for my purposes.

It’s really important that I clarify I’m not at a high risk of exposure. I generally don’t work or even socialize outside my home. Lockdown life frankly doesn’t look that different from my preferred lifestyle. If I were a high exposure risk I would think about this differently

I’m in the process of getting a prescription for prophylactic ivermectin, which has also become extremely politicized — to the point of becoming a censored topic on some platforms. I’m not giving advice, here. I’m not making broader efficacy claims. I’m just trying to be honest

COVID is no joke. You do not want to get COVID. “Long COVID” symptoms should concern you even if you don’t think an infection would kill you. But the vaccines are very new and skipped a great deal of otherwise required safety testing, and some of this data is really worrisome."

https://mobile.twitter.com/webdevMason/status/14056498962128...

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#109

Post by krona »

MAGZine wrote: post #74
dukeofdoom wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but by taking the vaccine 100% chance of doing that. Virus, only if I get it.

You're weighing a real possibility against an unfounded one. P(Complications|Covid) has a calculatable probability. P(Complications|Vaccine) is not, because we don't even know if they exist. And further, we strongly suspect they don't. In other words, I think you're trading one hand for (at best) one in the bush.

P(Complications|ChAdOx1) is definitely not zero, especially for people < 40 years of age.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#110

Post by the-rc »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #52
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #4

I wish I could get people that are avoiding the COVID vaccine “because we don’t know what the long term effects are” to realize that we have real data showing that there are long term effects from getting full blown COVID. You don’t want a tiny piece of mRNA but you want the whole organism reproducing in your body? The whole genome and all the proteins made?

As someone not getting the vaccine. I'll explain my reasoning. At this point, the odds of getting COVID are small. And much better treatments are around the corner. Thus a 1% mortality rate for the elderly, with multiple co-morbidities, will be even lower for someone my age should I get it at some point. Vaccines introduce a foreign substance 100% of the time into your body, sometimes have side effects. I won't even…

There's even greater herd immunity for measles and co., yet there are outbreaks among unvaccinated people all the time. Perhaps those odds are not that small. COVID-19 is probably never going to go away.

And you worry about the long term side effects for the vaccine's one protein, but only focus on the treatment (and not the side effects) for the virus that has 29 of them and tries its best to multiply itself. Do you see how this line of reasoning doesn't seem to compute?

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