Keystone symposium Long COVID and Other Post-Acute Infection Syndromes August 10-13 2025

The organisers are being strict about not posting slides, graphs, tables etc so we'll have to wait for the actual publications for data and ascertainment details. But they were emphasising fatigue, postural symptoms, myalgia, poor sleep and brain fog, so that sounds broadly in the ball park.

The interpretation at the end relates to the Reactome pathways they found using the proteomics data. I think we've previously commented on limitations with pathway analysis with genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics.
 
The trouble is that subclinical comorbigdities are bound to impact case recruitment. A bit like the Beentjes study I think you are almost bound to pick up noise from that.

These people are at my hospital. I have had a clinical meeting with them. I won't say more but I didn't get a feel for a clear focus.
 
A question I might as well put here. If we think people with post infective fatigue have a prolonged immune signature that could be picked up on blood samples it would be worth checking known post-infective syndromes. The obvious ones are Reiters and post streptococcus psoriasis. In these we know there is a persistently abnormal immune response that can produce major tissue pathology. But at least when I was working I heard nothing about any consistent findings in blood that shed light on what was going on.

So maybe we should not expect to find anything.
 
During Danny Altmann's plenary, discussing the major impact on children they're seeing as part of their larger study —

"And it's very tough to see and it was hard for us because we found it very hard to get the funding agreed from our funder. Because at the last moment they said the advice we've had from our referees at the Dept of Health is not to fund the paediatric part of the study because their advice is that Long Covid in children is purely psychological. And it's just that it takes them a few months to recover from their acute Covid and otherwise they're completely well. So we're very worried you'll have nobody to study. So this is my response to that... it's hard to watch."

On screen is EQ5D-Y prospective data of children 9-17, similar at baseline to fully recovered children. The chart shows significant or some problems having developed 2 years later in: mobility, looking after myself, doing usual activities, pain or discomfort, being worried sad or unhappy. In particular the scores for "no problems" in domains: doing usual activities, pain or discomfort have fallen off a cliff. Other domains are nearly as bad.
 
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SNT Gatchaman said:
the advice we've had from our referees at the Dept of Health is not to fund the paediatric part of the study because their advice is that Long Covid in children is purely psychological. And it's just that it takes them a few months to recover from their acute Covid and otherwise they're completely well.
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Government by magical thinking.
 
SNT Gatchaman said:
the advice we've had from our referees at the Dept of Health is not to fund the paediatric part of the study because their advice is that Long Covid in children is purely psychological
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I wonder where they are getting their advice from? Surely not a certain jolly prof who's chummy with this Labour faction?

Whoever it's coming from they are harming kids to an almost unthinkable degree.

All because it's politically convient to forget covid. Never forget the widely publicised lies that children didn't get sick from covid or spread it that went around when they wanted to reopen the schools.

Edit: Reading that has made me really angry, actually. But at least Altmann is stating what they are hearing from the government in a semi public forum. It puts all their weaseling around the ME delivery plan into a much clearer context.

On a related note, did Altmann say anything else interesting about his studies in his talk?
 
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In my cynical moments I think it isn't an accident that these trials are being done with a confused definition of Long Covid that lumps together different conditions so that no meaningful results come out of it. Because meaningful results would be quite inconvenient. I don't mean that's what researchers like Altmann want (iirc he has spoken elsewhere about the need to stratify) or are complicit in, but if that's the only work being funded then they're painted into a corner.
 
Sasha said:
But if so, they'd have to be ruling out an illness in children that adults have, and my question remains! :)
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Maybe they would just argue that the possibility of Münchhausen by proxy makes a study unfeasible, because you'd have lower chances of ending up with the cohort you want to study (but Altmann's quote suggests something quite different).
 
Sasha said:
Is there any possible biological rationale why an illness that's real in adults would be purely psychological in children?
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In the nineties there was a Royal College report on food allergies/ intolerances in children and they concluded that in children the reactions were physical but not in adults, so the children the day before their 18th birthday, their allergy/intolerance was physical then the next day it was all psychological as they were then adults. I think it was the Great Ormond Street research paper which showed their food allergies/intolerances were physical but as it was only done on children they held to the notion that in adults it was psychological. They didn't seem to find that at all incongruous
 
SNT Gatchaman said:
we've had from our referees at the Dept of Health is not to fund the paediatric part of the study because their advice is that Long Covid in children is purely psychological. And it's just that it takes them a few months to recover from their acute Covid and otherwise they're completely well
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Same as it ever was. You could read the exact same excuse a century ago, nothing's changed at all, it's all stuck in time. And they do this because there are never any consequences for being wrong. Not only is no one ever held accountable, even after things shift there is never any thought to hold anyone accountable, failure of choice is considered fully acceptable, in fact not doing so is what's considered deranged.

Until the profession and their systems are held accountable, the most basic form of accountability, nothing will change, there's no incentive, not even any interest in it. That it's one of the oldest professions makes it so much more absurd, those are typically only found in the growing pains of a nascent industry, not one spanning literal millennia.
 
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