Article and Documentary BBC: Long Covid: Early findings bring hope for diagnostic tests

Sly Saint

Sly Saint

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Scientists say they have detected irregularities in the blood of long Covid patients that could one day pave the way for a test for the condition.

Imperial College London researchers found a pattern of rogue antibodies in the blood of a small number of people with long Covid.

They hope it could lead to a simple blood test within six to 18 months.

Dr Elaine Maxwell, from the National Institute of Health Research, said the early findings were "exciting".

She said there could be "a number of different things happening after a Covid-19 infection" and an autoimmune response "has been one of the suspected mechanisms".

But she warned that long Covid was a "complex condition", saying it was important to continue to research the other causal factors so all different types of post-Covid syndrome could be diagnosed and treated.

Long Covid is not yet fully understood and can cover a range of symptoms lasting long after initial infection including fatigue, breathlessness, headaches and muscle pain.

There are currently no tests to diagnose long Covid.
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Panorama's Long Covid: Will I Ever Get Better? will be on BBC One at 19:35 BST on Monday 12 July and on BBC iPlayer (UK only)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57776010
 
The fascinating part will be once the paper is released and whether we see the autoantibodies that the Imperial team claim to have detected match those seen the Scheibenbogen team in ME/CFS. (And, until we see a paper, we shouldn't get too excited: I want to see the sample size, statistical significance, correction for multiple comparisons etc etc).


Also: the rule 'never just read the abstract' applies 1000x as much to the press release
 
Sasha said:
I wonder whether we should have less hope for ourselves about this, given that I thought that autoimmunity had been already quite thoroughly explored and ruled out for us (or maybe I'm wrong about that).
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I also wonder whether some of this work is treading similar paths to those already followed in ME, and will ultimately produce similarly disappointing results. I hope not, of course, but when you get new researchers entering a field, it's inevitable that there'll be some reinventing of the wheel.
 


This is a longer article than the one posted at the top of this thread: “Long Covid: Will I ever get better?”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-57693637
Eureka moment
The best email I received after the earlier article was from Paul Garner, professor of infectious diseases at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

We had contracted Covid around the same time and his articles in the BMJ describing his symptoms had been a eureka moment for me because until then no-one could understand what was wrong with me.

We had been in touch for months. He was supportive and helpful.

In November he emailed to say he was better. If he could get better I figured that meant I could too.

Just hearing that from him gave me a massive boost. I tried to focus on the ways the symptoms were reducing. And started to think about the hills I would climb once recovered.
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Long Covid: Will Paul Garner ever go away?
 
Robert 1973 said:


This is a longer article than the one posted at the top of this thread: “Long Covid: Will I ever get better?”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-57693637



Long Covid: Will Paul Garner ever go away?
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I really feel for her and getting it a second time too - such bad luck.

In the article she says, 'Several people got in touch to tell me I would never get better. That I needed to accept my position was permanent.' I saw some people saying this to her on twitter after her first article came out. I thought it was inappropriate. Not what you need to hear when you are newly ill, even if it might be possibility.

Andy said:
Perhaps we are experiencing Long Paul Garner? We thought that we'd be afflicted by him for a shorter period of time than has actually been the case, and he's still hanging around making our lives a misery?
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haha! I wonder how much he will feature in the Panorama this evening :(
 
Robert 1973 said:


This is a longer article than the one posted at the top of this thread: “Long Covid: Will I ever get better?”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-57693637



Long Covid: Will Paul Garner ever go away?
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As journalism goes, this is a terrible piece, one of the worst ones so far and a disservice to the public. It's too conflicting to have to push an alternative reality that can't be reconciled with reality. The message is obviously being pushed top-down.

But then again, how are science journalists supposed to do when they are misinformed by the medical professionals they interview? Everything is in the choice of people to interview, and it's hard to choose worse than Garner and Carson. This is manufacturing consent, not journalism, not public health.
 
The BBC's appalling coverage of long covid appears to be intensifying recently.

Re: testing, where did this idea come from that you cannot diagnose people clinically?
Such a test could be misused if misinterpreted and used to exclude LC.
 
Mij said:
I don't think I've ever seen a pwME in a wheelchair suffering from 'extreme tiredness'.

Tiredness is a lack of sleep. I believe 90% of the population would be in wheelchairs if this was the case.
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I am in a wheelchair because of severe ataxia and the consequences of having a positive Romberg sign which was once considered to be added to the diagnosis of ME. Many people with ME are in wheelchairs because of POTS.

Until the experts on ME acknowledge these things we will get nowhere.
 
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