Long COVID: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations, 2023, Davis, Topol et al

https://twitter.com/user/status/1616163231437029376

 

I think it's really good that people are reading something that actually mentions ME/CFS in the context of common Long Covid sequelae.

 

So the major finding is that there are no major findings.

 

Yes, I am sure they will attempt to reuse all the misinformation they used about ME as that was so successful for them. Stating quite confidently that ME was deconditioning without ever taking the chance of finding out it was not true.

The difference now is that fit, healthy people are getting covid then not getting better. We were not believed but this is happening in full public view.

It is also obvious that people are not gaining anything from being ill. Those "secondary benefits" they harp on about are less believable when someone in the public eye has to give up their career.

Of course, when it is people who have been sick for many years that are being used for research there will always be a doubt about whether the results are due to prolonged abnormal living. It is tragic that large scale studies of the effects of covid were not done at the beginning. Since people are still getting infected a prospective study is still just about possible but I won't get my hopes up.

 

Unless we count people with ME, millions of us, and millions more with similar chronic illnesses having been proven right as not a major finding. It's nothing new for us but this is basically as groundbreaking as it gets, a long-standing paradigm is clearly invalided after decades of wrongly forcing it onto millions. Which most people won't be willing to accept, but still there it is, showing how little evidence actually matters in medicine when people aren't culturally willing to accept it, especially when beliefs specifically compel to not bother doing rigorous scientific work.

There are also specific recommendations such as creating a dedicated research institute and a plan to move forward that recognizes the long-standing nature of this problem. It's the same as usual and essentially amounts to "uh, do, like, your job? like, how you normally do" but nevertheless, anyone who claims they don't know where to begin can simply step aside and let those who do know lead the way.

 

According to Eric Tool on recent IndieSAGE interview, the paper took a year in peer review, with constant revisions up to publication.

 

Merged thread - note correction published

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2

• Review Article
• Published: 13 January 2023

Long COVID: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations

• Hannah E. Davis,
• Lisa McCorkell,
• …
• Eric J. Topol

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 21, pages 133–146 (2023)Cite this article

• 877k Accesses
  
  
• 82 Citations
  
  
• 13750 Altmetric
  
  
• Metrics details

An Author Correction to this article was published on 17 April 2023

This article has been updated

Abstract
Long COVID is an often debilitating illness that occurs in at least 10% of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections. More than 200 symptoms have been identified with impacts on multiple organ systems. At least 65 million individuals worldwide are estimated to have long COVID, with cases increasing daily. Biomedical research has made substantial progress in identifying various pathophysiological changes and risk factors and in characterizing the illness; further, similarities with other viral-onset illnesses such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome have laid the groundwork for research in the field. In this Review, we explore the current literature and highlight key findings, the overlap with other conditions, the variable onset of symptoms, long COVID in children and the impact of vaccinations. Although these key findings are critical to understanding long COVID, current diagnostic and treatment options are insufficient, and clinical trials must be prioritized that address leading hypotheses. Additionally, to strengthen long COVID research, future studies must account for biases and SARS-CoV-2 testing issues, build on viral-onset research, be inclusive of marginalized populations and meaningfully engage patients throughout the research process.

 

A doctor from the Norwegian Institute for Public Health (FHI) recently said in a podcast that the institute is sceptical to this Nature review because it lacks a description of the methodology of how one has arrived to the results in the studies described. He said it's difficult to understand why the authors have chosen to present the studies in the way that's been done. The overviews FHI write are systematic with descriptions of the methodology and the approach of how they find and summarise studies. This makes it possible to use the same methodology to check whether you get the same answers, and this is not possible through the Nature article.

So it seems they therefore choose not to take the Nature review into account at all. This is btw the same institute that is behind the Cochrane review on GET and ME. Also the same institute from where Flottorp has said that if people are not informed of Long Covid, they will not expect to get Long Covid and therefore won't get Long Covid.

 

Merged thread.

"Hannah Davis: A 360° on Long Covid"
"Our in-depth conversation, updating our recent review paper"

By Eric Topol

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/hannah-davis-a-360-on-long-covid

Includes audio and a transcript. Transcript looks auto-generated - found several errors while skimming it.

 

Merged thread

Eric Topol on the Science Translational Medicine paper

I haven't been able to read this yet, and it has probably been posted already (if it's worthy of a read), but in case not:

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/lo...big-miss?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

 

Eric Topol posts on Mastodon —