Mail Online: Why many of those struck by Long Covid may be suffering from glandular fever: Blood tests on some patients are coming back positive for ‘

Very interesting article in the Mail Online.

‘Why many of those struck by Long Covid may be suffering from glandular fever: Blood tests on some patients are coming back positive for ‘reactivated’ Epstein-Barr - and it could lead to a range of effective treatments

• Most would test positive for antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus if given a blood test
• Tests carried out on long Covid patients are recording another type of antibodies
• They suggest virus has ‘woken up’ and body is responding by fighting against it’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...-suffering-glandular-fever.html?ITO=applenews

This seems to be in keeping with Bhupesh Prusty's work on mitochondrial fragmentation caused by (possibly reactivated?) viruses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkVcWvwtZ0

What do you think folks?

 

If catching Covid can reactivate glandular fever what are the chances that other viruses people have caught in the past are getting reactivated too? Is there going to be epidemics of mumps, chicken pox, measles, rubella and other diseases that many older people will have had as children? And what about colds and flu? Everyone has had a cold at some point in their lives. I'm not so sure about flu.

 

Anecdotally, plenty of people on the longcovid subreddits are reporting reactivated EBV.

 

How do they know? Are GP's actually testing for this?
Can someone ask one's GP for this?

Is this part of the the set of tests that they are supposed to do which 'come back normal?' or do they not do this as part of their routine.

 

It depends on your doctor and the country you live in I imagine. Most of these Longcovid anecdotes seem to be from people in the US.

Doctors here in Australia for example are very reluctant to test for EBV. I only got an EBV test during a severe relapse a few years ago because I wouldn't shut up about how it felt like I had EBV all over again. (The IgM turned out to be positive.)

 

What actually counts as a reactivation? Positive IgM?

I was told reactivation of the herpes family during other infections or immunological stressors is "normal". The immune system can handle it.

Since my ME started with Mono I dont know if that really is the case...

I might have had some improvement with high dose valtrex (Lerner protocol) but not entirely sure since other factors might have played a role, too.



.

 

I got this response today from Bhupesh Prusty on Twitter:

 

I've had vestibular neuritis for the last 10+ months, and from what I've read is that it is caused by a herpes virus. I have been terribly sick with this. This past week I was finally well enough to see my GP, but she did not check off EBV on my lab requisition. The lab technician is coming this week to draw my blood, and I'm VERY tempted to check off EBV on my form. My past doctors didn't really mind when I checked off some extras, but I'm uncertain how my GP would react if I did. I have a few days to decide . . . I haven't had a vaccine yet btw.

 

I can't speak for anyone else but I would not do this.

Not without permission from your GP anyway.

IMO it could easily be seen as theft, misrepresentation, medical fraud, etc.

 

You might get Stevens Johnson syndrome and go blind, or die of agranulocytosis or whatever. Drugs can have nasty effects so are best saved for when they are likely to be helpful.

I suspect that changes in EBV antibody titres after Covid19 are partly just coincidence and partly what is called an anamnestic response - when the immune system is stimulated by a new antigen it often produces a bit more antibody to everything it remembers from before. It looks to me as if Dr Prusty is talking through his hat.

 

If other types of antibodies are raised, does that mean the virus is reactivated, or simply that the immune system is pumping out more antibodies?

Edit. I think Jonathan's post has just answered this.

 

I think I might have contracted COVID in late February of 2020 when the pandemic first arrived. I had cold chills/beaded forehead and felt weak/sick, it sprung on me within a few minutes. I had to immediately lie down and stay in bed until the next morning. My Asian friend had friends who went to China for the Lunar New Year, and we had gone grocery shopping together soon after that. He told me back then that he was really really sick for 3 days and had never experienced anything like it. It was around a few weeks or month later that I developed vestibular neuritis caused by a herpes virus (HHV6 or EBV). It is still lingering today.

Personally, I would not take antivirals long term.

 

This thread makes me wonder about a few things.

What is the relationship between Long Covid and EBV? I'm specifically thinking of the statistics, not the biochemistry.

Can people have EBV without knowing?

What percentage of people have had confirmed EBV?

Is EBV always confirmed by testing, or do doctors diagnose on the basis of symptoms?

Is there any known relationship between confirmed EBV and severity of Covid-19?

What percentage of people who get something they personally describe as Long Covid have had confirmed EBV?

What percentage of people who get completely better from Covid-19 have had confirmed EBV?

 

Yes. From wikipedia:

" In the United States, about half of all five-year-old children and about 90% of adults have evidence of previous infection.[17] Infants become susceptible to EBV as soon as maternal antibody protection disappears. Many children become infected with EBV, and these infections usually cause no symptoms or are indistinguishable from the other mild, brief illnesses of childhood. In the United States and other developed countries, many people are not infected with EBV in their childhood years.[18] When infection with EBV occurs during adolescence, it causes infectious mononucleosis 35 to 50% of the time.[19]"

 

As far as I know they can. Like a lot of things some people don't get very severe symptoms & some do.

I only discovered I had had EBV when I tested positive for antibodies about 15 years ago.

I was never diagnosed with it but I remember getting a really, really bad flu that knocked me completely off my feet in my late teens or thereabouts. It's possible that was EBV but it could also have just been the flu.

 

Typically, people ‘getting tested for EBV’ get a serology testing, which ‘tries’ to determine whether one has a new and active infection or a reactivation. The serology does not show whether there is active virus. A monospot would be a more definitive test for that purpose but i am quite happy to stand corrected if someone objects.

It has been established that even healthy people reactivates their herpes viruses without even noticing. It is also known that EBV can be a virus of consequence, notably in cancer, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases, but at the same time there are lots of science to be uncovered in that regard.

 

Thanks for the info re : EBV.

I've never knowingly had EBV or Covid-19, and I'm just curious. No doubt my curiosity would be diagnosed as health anxiety, because curiosity is apparently a sin or a mental illness.

Obviously if EBV can wake up it seems likely that others could wake up too.

It is already known that various versions of the herpes virus can and do return e.g. cold sores can come back many times.

And what about chicken pox, returning in the form of shingles?

I read about a case of someone who got shingles in their eyes. They changed colour from something that was not-blue to blue. The first doctor dismissed her or treated her for something trivial, I can't remember the details. She had to go to a hospital with a well-regarded eye department to get proper diagnosis and treatment. She just managed to save her sight, although it never returned to how good it was before she got shingles. If she'd waited longer she would have gone blind.