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Thread from David Putrino, one of the authors, mostly discussing the cortisol findings: One interesting point he makes is that 40% of the LC cohort in this study have POTS.

I definitely had the same question reading this (are the patients depressed or do they have other health problems that cause them to answer the questionnaires in that way), but I think the fundamental question here (can improving gut function improve mental state) is pretty reasonable. I'm not...

It’s Not Just Long COVID Society has been underestimating the long-term consequences of viruses, bacterial infections, and parasites for ages. in the Atlantic by Hank Balfour and William Hoffman Bizarre to talk about "long mono/EBV" and not mention ME/CFS. "Most patients recover from mono in a...

Strong results and interesting to see these kinds of findings in post-Covid patients in general, not Long Covid patients in particular. They saw that people who were unvaccinated reached their aerobic threshold sooner: "The AT was significantly different between the vaccinated and unvaccinated...

Interesting results, but their study really needed a control arm to show what they are claiming to show regarding depression.

On the subject of circulating spike protein which has been seen in a couple studies of LC patients and potential impacts: Here's a press release about a conference presentation on how SARS-2 spike protein causes inflammation in the heart in mice, while spike protein from NL63, another...

In the PC Derivation and Validation section, they say they used depression and anxiety questions from the SPHERE questionnaire to measure mood disturbance and then validated those against the relevant parts of POMS. But this seems pretty obvious and uncontroversial to me, people who report more...

Acyclovir doesn't even work for acute EBV! It's funny/depressing how we keep ruling things out based on flimsy evidence and then coming back around to them years later (e.g. it's not autoimmune because rituximab doesn't help, etc).

Interesting that the cohort was 51% female and the PIFS/CFS group was only 46% female (OR 0.72 (0.42, 1.25)), but the cohort was too small to draw any strong conclusions from this. Both Ross River virus and Q fever were more likely to result in PIFS/CFS than EBV (but again, huge confidence...

That one does look way too big for you! I've read that some people with smaller faces find the 3M VFlex works well for them, since it is a different design. Personally, I've switched to an elastomeric P100 respirator (the rubbery kind with two filters and no exhalation valve) and find the seal...

Long Covid patients had fewer small capillaries under their tongues (hospitalized acute Covid patients had even fewer): By measuring the changes in velocity of red blood cells in blood vessels feeding the capillaries and in the capillaries themselves under changing conditions, they were able...

Abstract Background Recent studies have highlighted Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a multisystemic vascular disease. Up to 60% of the patients suffer from long-term sequelae and persistent symptoms even 6 months after the initial infection. Methods This prospective, observational study...

Doug Kell and Resia Pretorius will be on BBC 4 speaking about their research at 4:30 BST (in just under 1.5 hours from this post). Presumably it will be available afterwards as well.

They collected the samples between 10am and noon, roughly, so it's not a waking cortisol test. Assuming LC patients have a latter sleep schedule on average than the controls, wouldn't taking the sample at this time actually bias results in the opposite direction (because LC patients would be...

Highlights: "At 12 months post-COVID, 67% (40 of 60) had returned to their usual pre-COVID health and 80% (48 of 60) had returned to their usual pre-COVID activities. At 18 months, 77% (27 of 35) had returned to their usual health and 83% (29 of 35) to their usual activities." "Participants...

Abstract Little data exist on long COVID outcomes beyond one year. In a cohort enrolled with mild-moderate acute COVID-19, a wide range of symptoms manifest at 6, 12, and 18 months. Endorsing over 3 symptoms associates with poorer quality of life in 5 domains: physical, social, fatigue, pain...

The cortisol difference is pretty large though and they looked for an association with time of sample collection and found none. I think you'd expect more overlap if this were due to sleep patterns or morning activity levels. Could be nothing, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss cortisol...

Twitter thread from Prof Iwasaki:

Abstract SARS-CoV-2 infection can result in the development of a constellation of persistent sequelae following acute disease called post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) or Long COVID. Individuals diagnosed with Long COVID frequently report unremitting fatigue, post-exertional malaise, and a...

Circulating spike protein in 64% of PASC patients seems like a pretty significant finding (though they also found spike in 29% of non-PASC patients). For the PASC patients, the blood samples were taken 18 weeks or more after infection. It's not totally clear, but I think samples from the no PASC...