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Possible impact of functional active gpcr-autoantibodies in long Covid

iovs.arvojournals.org

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Re: Possible impact of functional active gpcr-autoantibodies in long Covid

#21

Post by adrianN »

robhunter wrote: post #19
nicoburns wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long covid is ongoing chronic illness symptoms following a covid infection, including but not limited to fatigue, heart problem, lung problems, brain fog, and auto-immune problems.

By that definition, anyone experiencing chronic illness symptoms "following" (said another way, "after") a Covid infection has "Long Covid" - even if Covid had nothing to do with those chronic illness symptoms developing or continuing. I think we need a better definition.

Perhaps we'll get one after we understand it better. Medicine rarely works from first principles.

Re: Possible impact of functional active gpcr-autoantibodies in long Covid

#22

Post by deng »

V__ wrote: post #2

Maybe someone with a medical background can answer this: Does this mean that long covid could be treated by blocking certain protein receptors?

There are experimental drugs that can neutralize AAbs. They were successfully tested on Long Covid patients, but this is very preliminary. See for instance

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.75466...

Re: Possible impact of functional active gpcr-autoantibodies in long Covid

#23

Post by kens »

The title here ("100% of Long Covid patients have GPCR-autoantibodies") is editorialized, making this sound interesting. The actual title is "Possible Impact of functional active GPCR-autoantibodies on retinal microcirculation in Long-COVID."

The study looked at 76 long covid patients with no control group, so you can't make a general conclusion from it. This post is a waste of time unless you're interested in obscure opthamological research.

Re: Possible impact of functional active gpcr-autoantibodies in long Covid

#24

Post by kennywinker »

robhunter wrote: post #19
nicoburns wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long covid is ongoing chronic illness symptoms following a covid infection, including but not limited to fatigue, heart problem, lung problems, brain fog, and auto-immune problems.

By that definition, anyone experiencing chronic illness symptoms "following" (said another way, "after") a Covid infection has "Long Covid" - even if Covid had nothing to do with those chronic illness symptoms developing or continuing. I think we need a better definition.

I think at this point diagnosing long covid necessarily involves trusting patients. If you had no chronic illness symptoms you were aware of, and then get covid, and then have chronic illness symptoms - that's long covid. Until we understand what it is better, there's not going to be any way to objectively test for it, or define it more clearly.

Re: Possible impact of functional active gpcr-autoantibodies in long Covid

#25

Post by delroth »

morninglight wrote: post #14

This paper was from the journal "IOVS - Investigative ophthalmology and visual science". So, I sent a copy to my ophthalmologist and asked his opinion. He replied that he couldn't understand any of it. Should I start looking for a new ophthalmologist? .

Maybe? Reading the abstract, it seems to make sense to me how this paper ended up in this specific journal. From what I understand, the authors were specifically looking at one ophthalmology-related long COVID symptom (impaired retinal microcirculation) and found a common marker that is linked to that symptom.

Granted, I have 0 experience in any medical field, but it doesn't immediately look like a red flag to me?

Re: Possible impact of functional active gpcr-autoantibodies in long Covid

#26

Post by cjbgkagh »

robhunter wrote: post #19
nicoburns wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long covid is ongoing chronic illness symptoms following a covid infection, including but not limited to fatigue, heart problem, lung problems, brain fog, and auto-immune problems.

By that definition, anyone experiencing chronic illness symptoms "following" (said another way, "after") a Covid infection has "Long Covid" - even if Covid had nothing to do with those chronic illness symptoms developing or continuing. I think we need a better definition.

It's likely that long covid and many chronic illnesses share a similar pathology. The symptoms are surprisingly clustered.

Re: Possible impact of functional active gpcr-autoantibodies in long Covid

#28

Post by kennywinker »

throwaway290 wrote: post #20
nicoburns wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s like saying there’s no way to medically confirm that someone has a sore throat. Of course we may wish to determine the underlying cause of the sore throat, but even if we can’t that doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t have a sore throat. We don’t yet know the underlying cause of long covid symptoms, which is what research like this is trying to uncover.

You can say that one has sore throat, or fever, or fatigue, or headache. But if you say one has long COVID, you are describing a condition (possibly a new illness, but not yet?) with a wide range of symptoms that occur in different combinations in different people, it seems fine to ask for clarification about what sets it apart other than having gone through acute COVID (natural question, as a person who has gone thr…

> reported by people who have had acute COVID.

Plenty of cases of long covid are linked to not-particularly-severe covid cases.

Re: Possible impact of functional active gpcr-autoantibodies in long Covid

#29

Post by cjbgkagh »

evandijk70 wrote: post #5
V__ wrote: post #2

Maybe someone with a medical background can answer this: Does this mean that long covid could be treated by blocking certain protein receptors?

Another question: how common are GPCR-antibodies in non-covid patients?

I think just about everyone has some level of GPCR-antibodies present just that people with long-covid have much greater amounts of them.

Re: Possible impact of functional active gpcr-autoantibodies in long Covid

#30

Post by robonerd »

evandijk70 wrote: post #5
V__ wrote: post #2

Maybe someone with a medical background can answer this: Does this mean that long covid could be treated by blocking certain protein receptors?

Another question: how common are GPCR-antibodies in non-covid patients?

Very common, no doubt. Targeting GPCRs is a very wide net, GPCRs are a huge superfamily of proteins.

> GPCRs are an important drug target and approximately 34%[6] of all Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drugs target 108 members of this family. The global sales volume for these drugs is estimated to be 180 billion US dollars as of 2018.[6] It is estimated that GPCRs are targets for about 50% of drugs currently on the market, mainly due to their involvement in signaling pathways related to many diseases i.e. mental, metabolic including endocrinological disorders, immunological including viral infections, cardiovascular, inflammatory, senses disorders, and cancer. The long ago discovered association between GPCRs and many endogenous and exogenous substances, resulting in e.g. analgesia, is another dynamically developing field of the pharmaceutical research.[2]

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