News about Long Covid including its relationship to ME/CFS 2020 to 2021

Reporter at ProPublica, a serious journalism publication.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1430286511392518145

 

Probably a few people here would have relevant input for this:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1430057856661958683

 

A sympathetic interview on Swedish radio today (5 minutes). Dr Judith Bruchfeld, Karolinska University Hospital, talks about long covid (prevalence, prognosis, treatments, rehab etc). ME is not mentioned.

Senaste läget för långtidscovidsjuka i Sverige
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/senaste-laget-for-langtidscovidsjuka-i-sverige

 

Live Science What chronic fatigue syndrome can teach us about 'long COVID'

quote:
Because COVID-19 long haulers' symptoms became less severe over time, Jason predicts that many long haulers will recover, either fully or for the most part, but that patients who are still sick after a year or two "will be very comparable, probably, to the ME/CFS case definition," he said.

While Jason predicts that long COVID patients who ultimately have ME/CFS will be a subset of the total long hauler population, Nath, on the other hand, sees essentially all cases of long COVID as being similar to ME/CFS. "Anywhere from 10 to 30% of individuals at six months post [SARS CoV-2] infection are still complaining of symptoms that could overlap with ME/CFS. Whether they are exactly the same, we still do not know, but they certainly look similar in many ways," Nath told Live Science.

 

Reporting of a Chinese study published in the Lancet. Most long haulers aren't getting better.

link

Edit: another story about the same study:

 

“This virus doesn’t end once you get discharged from the hospital or once you get over the initial acute symptoms,” says Putrino. “This virus persists.” He notes that while the recent Lancet study only focused on hospitalized COVID-19 patients, other, albeit smaller, studies have shown that COVID-19 symptoms may linger in around 20% of those who get infected but don’t get sick enough to go to the hospital".

How do they know that the virus 'persists' for PWpost- long-covid? Are they basing this on persisting symptoms or testing/markers?

 

and where do these, usually wildly different, numbers come from?

Is it 5%, 10%, 20% or 30% (or any other seemly totally made up number) of pwLC?

 

An interview with Dr Richard Schloeffel on long covid. Dr Schloeffel has been treating ME/CFS for decades in Australia and is well regarded by patients:

 

From the Time article link on LongCovid posted by Art above:

“Taken together, the implications are that people with persistent COVID-19 symptoms are looking at a long recovery,” says Putrino. At Mount Sinai’s Long COVID program that involves a personalized approach to addressing patients’ diverse symptoms, which could range from kidney, heart and lung problems to generalized fatigue and muscle weakness. For the latter, rehabilitation might include a tedious process of gradually stimulating the autonomic nervous system with carefully supervised exercises to slowly stimulate normal nerve activation, which could take as long as three to four months before patients feel better.” -

Latter sounds like the central sensitisation hypothesis, unproven and a form of graded exercise seems to be the treatment. Concerning.

 

Interesting that he's saying vaccines protect against Long Covid. I wonder what is his source for that claim.

 

The vaccines do not provide 100% immunity from infection. Asymptomatic people (as well as symptomatic) can develop LongCOVID. I am not sure how one can say vaccines fully protect against LongCOVID though I do see how the risk of LongCOVID is reduced in those fully vaccinated....

 

I'm not sure I can, given that the vaccines only seem to protect against the need for serious hospitalisation, given all the stories about virus load being high in those vaccinated that have circulated.

Suggesting that the vaccines are not doing as 'hoped' and are instead doing something else, and not really impeding the virus much, in its day to day job, of replicating and spreading.

So how much protection against long covid would depend on whether these 'so your not gonna die' features of the vaccine are relevant to long covid, or not, if at all.

 

I thought it was never the intention for the vaccines to protect against infection, but against severe disease. That's why Vincent Racaniello in This Week In Virology seems to hate the term "breakthrough infection". The call it "the B-word".

 

A vaccine can protect a population against infection - by reducing the likelihood of the virus being passed around.

 

My understanding is that it also prevents mutation and new variants?

Does this make the current vaccine less effective against the new variants?

 

Only in the trivial sense that if you have no virus you cannot have a mutation.

 

Chalder said about pw ME/cfs:

(here we go again?)

What's causing long COVID?
Scientists are looking for the mechanism behind the condition...
16 August 2021
Interview with
Akiko Iwasaki, Yale University

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/whats-causing-long-covid