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Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

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Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#31

Post by megous »

JohnMakin wrote: post #14
tasty_freeze wrote: post #9

The title is a lot more exciting than what is actually being claimed. They say that malfunctioning mitochondria are to blame ... but there is no insight into why the mitochondria are malfunctioning. My wife, a formerly energetic, outgoing, type A person, has been suffering from ME/CFS for 20 years. Long COVID symptoms are highly similar to ME/CFS problems, and the hope has been that the long-underfunded ME/CFS resear…

It is exciting. Before this, we could only posit wild guesses as to the physical mechanism behind long COVID (if there was one at all). In the first year or two, scientists even doubted whether it was real at all. When you know the physical mechanism, it allows you to figure out a way to treat it.

The mitochondrial damage idea was around for at least 2 years already, maybe more...

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#32

Post by zanfr »

blindriver wrote: post #18
kick_in_the_dor wrote: post #5

> we saw that the mitochondria of the muscle, also known as the energy factories of the cell *Ahem*, powerhouse of the cell Jokes aside, this is a terrifying stat: "Although the majority of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus recover within weeks...around one in eight will get long-COVID. Symptoms in patients with long-COVID...include severe cognitive problems (brain fog), fatigue, exercise intolerance, autonom…

There is nothing to be “terrified” about. You are conflating different types of “long covid”. Some covid infections, just like the cold or the flu, cause symptoms longer than the 5-7 days, maybe for 2-3 weeks. That’s long covid. Also remember that long covid symptoms include symptoms like depression and it ends up not being very rigorously defined. Then there is the version that creates long term chronic fatigue symp…

hmm friends of mine who got infected in early 2020 are still feeling quite unwell also recent studies have shown the body never totally clears the virus.

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#33

Post by docfort »

blindriver wrote: post #18
kick_in_the_dor wrote: post #5

> we saw that the mitochondria of the muscle, also known as the energy factories of the cell *Ahem*, powerhouse of the cell Jokes aside, this is a terrifying stat: "Although the majority of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus recover within weeks...around one in eight will get long-COVID. Symptoms in patients with long-COVID...include severe cognitive problems (brain fog), fatigue, exercise intolerance, autonom…

There is nothing to be “terrified” about. You are conflating different types of “long covid”. Some covid infections, just like the cold or the flu, cause symptoms longer than the 5-7 days, maybe for 2-3 weeks. That’s long covid. Also remember that long covid symptoms include symptoms like depression and it ends up not being very rigorously defined. Then there is the version that creates long term chronic fatigue symp…

I think that for people without enough paid sick leave (maybe especially in the US), being knocked out for 2-3 weeks with a virus that is more infectious than flu is an event causing long term damage to their life. Especially with the repeal of many COVID-safety protocols at companies because of social pressure.

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#34

Post by megous »

alpaca128 wrote: post #28
progrus wrote: post #19

Am I supposed to believe that these physiological effects have nothing to do with fear of the virus? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447278/

If it's psychosomatic then why does it only happen with this specific virus and not, say, with chronic illnesses?

There was way more persistent fear-mongering in the media about COVID-19, than anything else in recent years.

(Not arguing for the parent idea, just why this illness may be special, from the fear perspective.)

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#35

Post by lostindetails »

JohnMakin wrote: post #14
tasty_freeze wrote: post #9

The title is a lot more exciting than what is actually being claimed. They say that malfunctioning mitochondria are to blame ... but there is no insight into why the mitochondria are malfunctioning. My wife, a formerly energetic, outgoing, type A person, has been suffering from ME/CFS for 20 years. Long COVID symptoms are highly similar to ME/CFS problems, and the hope has been that the long-underfunded ME/CFS resear…

It is exciting. Before this, we could only posit wild guesses as to the physical mechanism behind long COVID (if there was one at all). In the first year or two, scientists even doubted whether it was real at all. When you know the physical mechanism, it allows you to figure out a way to treat it.

I remember this being shown last year already...

Found the link: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/sars-co...

AFAIK they even attributed the organ failures to the failures in mitocondrial energy production.

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#37

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

progrus wrote: post #19

Am I supposed to believe that these physiological effects have nothing to do with fear of the virus? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447278/

I was expecting the linked study to support your hypothesis that fear of covid-19 causes long-covid, but unfortunately it was just a writeup of 1 person's opinion of something that might have happened nearly a century ago, with literally 0 experimental methodology (because it appears to be an op-ed rather than an experiment?)

Your hypothesis doesn't seem super likely, though I'd entertain the theory if there were a study showing a linkage here. But as for your literal question, I don't think anyone supposes you specifically must do anything. After all, what's 1 person out of billions?

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#38

Post by lamontcg »

frakt0x90 wrote: post #11
xerox13ster wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more terrifying considering we can be reinfected multiple times so we might be rolling those odds every time. E: changed "we are" to "we might be"

It would be interesting to know if the odds decrease with reinfection. Are there any studies on that?

There are studies that are supposedly showing that people with multiple reinfections suffer more long covid:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article...

But that study itself notes:

> People that had their first infection early in the pandemic, though, were also more likely to report multiple COVID-19 infections. For example, in this study the average date of first infection for those with three or more infections was May 2021, compared to September 2021 for those with two infections, and May 2022 for those with one infection. Those infected earlier in the pandemic, before vaccination and the emergence of the Omicron variant were more likely to develop long-term symptoms, but also had more time since their first infection to become infected with COVID-19 again.

This is also all self-reported surveys. That means that they're selecting for people who will self-report questionnaires, which is incredibly highly biased.

Immunologically it doesn't make a lot of sense to me and there's no theoretical foundations for how this could be happening. If its linked to people with susceptible genetics/biology (something like MHC subtype) then long COVID should stabilize affecting only that population. If it is due to autoimmunity then people who have formed healthy immune responses to COVID shouldn't increasingly be susceptible after the initial immune response is formed. Give it a few more years, and I strongly suspect that better studies come out finding that long COVID risks decrease over time (although they probably never go to zero, but it starts to look more like flu/cold risk of ME/CFS and that antibodies to vaccination/prior infection are actually protective, like one would logically expect).

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#39

Post by megous »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #9

The title is a lot more exciting than what is actually being claimed. They say that malfunctioning mitochondria are to blame ... but there is no insight into why the mitochondria are malfunctioning. My wife, a formerly energetic, outgoing, type A person, has been suffering from ME/CFS for 20 years. Long COVID symptoms are highly similar to ME/CFS problems, and the hope has been that the long-underfunded ME/CFS resear…

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44432-3

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#40

Post by timr »

faitswulff wrote: post #25
blindriver wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing to be “terrified” about. You are conflating different types of “long covid”. Some covid infections, just like the cold or the flu, cause symptoms longer than the 5-7 days, maybe for 2-3 weeks. That’s long covid. Also remember that long covid symptoms include symptoms like depression and it ends up not being very rigorously defined. Then there is the version that creates long term chronic fatigue symp…

> Some covid infections, just like the cold or the flu, cause symptoms longer than the 5-7 days That's arguably also terrifying if even common viruses are known to cause long term conditions. Also consider the evidence pointing to a link between viral infection and dementia: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-study-of-500000-medical-recor...

When the symptoms are "a lingering cough" (which is what we're talking about most of the time), it's not terrifying. It's just something you ignored before and are not ignoring now.

As OP notes, there are certainly some small fraction people with worse outcomes. But the generic "long covid" term has mixed up all sorts of things -- from hospital syndrome (absolutely real! but very rare!) to symptoms that anyone would completely disregard prior to 2020 as "a head cold" (very common!)

Also, of course, there's a ton of motivated reasoning surrounding this topic where people are in forums and comment threads attributing every symptom under the sun to Covid, and dredging up bad observational studies to support their claims. The link to dementia likely falls in this bucket. It's not coincidental that most of the people to get seriously ill with Covid were/are old, and that most of the people who get dementia are...old.

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