A heart condition that plagues many COVID-19 patients and a misunderstood connective tissue disorder share some common links. Potentially even the same therapy. Steven Kautz and Bashar Badran, researchers at Medical University of South Carolina, began looking at using noninvasive vagus nerve stimulation as a way to relieve some of the symptoms. They did this early in the pandemic “before it was called long COVID,” Kautz said. Those early trials “showed some improvement in fatigue as well as depression and anxiety,” he said. Those are also symptoms of hEDS, and the researchers are conducting a trial with patients across South Carolina, which they hope to expand beyond the state and even nationwide. It was through that trial Iacono got the nerve stimulation device, although she had a 50-50 chance of getting the real thing or a simulation for half the time. The first few days, and she believes she was getting the real thing, it caused a kind of fuzzy feeling in her head, like static on a TV. But then she woke up one morning with clarity instead, which she said felt like an annoying background program on her computer had switched off. LINK
