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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

#71

Post by dekhn »

lamontcg wrote: post #38
frakt0x90 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I think we need more, better, and longer-term studies before we can adequately conclude that reinfections lead to more long covid. And I think the answer to that question, if it comes with enough accuracy, could influence long-term decisions about how we respond to COVID.

Already the progressive subset of my social media is mostly working on the assumption we are seeing a "rapidly rising, ever-worsening reinfections leading to continuously increasing amount of long covid", but that's not what I'm hearing from the medical subset (in person, off the record, not on social media, because they're tired of the whole social media garbage cycle).

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#72

Post by DoughnutHole »

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 wouldn’t characterise 1% as an “extremely small chance”, especially considering the prevalence of the disease, especially if it’s possible to develop it on your second or 3rd infection. Would you play Russian roulette with a gun with 100 chambers?

Compared to new-onset arthritis from the vaccine - the biggest lit review I can find found 45 confirmed cases across 31 studies. [1] For comparison there are over 730,000 (self reported, admittedly) cases of long covid lasting more than 104 weeks in the UK alone. [2]

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10055862/

[2]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#73

Post by francisofascii »

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…

Right, the mitochondrial dysfunction has known for a while. But is not not the cause, it is the symptom. Many argue the cause is viral persistence, causing a continual immune response causing the body to be dysregulated and mitochondrial dysfunction. Another idea is endothelial damage that simply takes time to be repaired and that sometimes can be made worse by over taxing your body.

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#75

Post by lamontcg »

dekhn wrote: post #71
lamontcg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I think we need more, better, and longer-term studies before we can adequately conclude that reinfections lead to more long covid. And I think the answer to that question, if it comes with enough accuracy, could influence long-term decisions about how we respond to COVID. Already the progressive subset of my social media is mostly working on the assumption we are seeing a "rapidly rising, ever-worsening reinfections…

I mean from the start of the pandemic most virologists were leaning towards COVID becoming another seasonal human coronavirus. Fauci initially was prepping us for the vaccines only being 50% effective against infection (which is probably around about where they actually wound up).

There's this Mandela effect in left-leaning circles which thinks that the messaging started with the early 3-month >90% efficacy-against-infection results from Dec 2020, and they're getting fairly hysterical that we abandoned zero covid, when that actually was never the policy. We just collectively all leaped to that hope with the first round of vaccine results because we wanted the pandemic to just have a simple off switch.

And now that's been twisted up into weird us-vs-them political pathologies where the nominally right-wing antivaxxers are shouting about how the vaccines don't work because they weren't what was "promised" while the left-wing is getting hysterical about giving up on covid eradication.

Most virologists/immunologists/microbiologists are happy that we have vaccines that are 95% efficacious against severe disease/death and that the pandemic is either over or winding down (based on entirely debatable definitions), but this pisses off both different political tribes in different ways.

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#76

Post by JohnMakin »

megous wrote: post #31
JohnMakin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You know what a hypothesis is right?

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#77

Post by faitswulff »

timr wrote: post #40
faitswulff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The link to dementia likely falls in this bucket.

The article I linked to wasn't about covid.

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#78

Post by feoren »

Zelphyr wrote: post #61
Zelphyr wrote: post #4

This connects closely with and supports Dr. Chris Palmer’s brain energy theory.

Could someone explain why this is getting downvoted?

> Palmer also sheds light on the new treatment pathways this theory opens up--which apply to all mental disorders, including anxiety, depression, ADHD, alcoholism, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, autism, and even schizophrenia.

Because he's an obvious hack who's completely full of shit? I always wondered what kind of person would ever have bought those early 1900s "Dr. Amazing's Medicinal Tonic" claims about curing syphillis, headaches, snake bites, cancer, broken bones, and bad breath. I guess I found one?

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#79

Post by Zelphyr »

feoren wrote: post #78
Zelphyr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could someone explain why this is getting downvoted?

> Palmer also sheds light on the new treatment pathways this theory opens up--which apply to all mental disorders, including anxiety, depression, ADHD, alcoholism, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, autism, and even schizophrenia. Because he's an obvious hack who's completely full of shit? I always wondered what kind of person would ever have bought those early 1900s "Dr. Amazing's Medicinal Tonic" claims about curi…

Can you give concrete evidential examples that refute his claims?

Re: Researchers discover physical cause of long Covid tiredness

#80

Post by user568439 »

seiferteric wrote: post #7

I really wonder if we will find these symptoms are caused by other viruses as well. Possibly candidate for chronic fatigue syndrome?

One hypothesis is that long covid is caused by reactivated Epstein Barr virus or other herpes family virus.

It hasn’t been confirmed but it seems clear that the initial Covid infection has great impact to the immune system and triggers all sort of collateral effects.

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