USA: NIH National Institutes of Health news

I agree with you strongly. Most disabling or most burdensome symptoms would be better. Medicine has a long history of dismissing post-infectious illness. Perhaps more broadly, they dismiss illness that aren't likely to kill you.

 

They're very misinformed. Long Covid is a huge spectrum and symptoms can range from annoying to debilitating. ME (at least by IOM criteria) has a minimum severity, it's always quite debilitating.

 

Ohio State News: 'Finding a solution for long COVID, one cell type at a time'

'$15 million grant funds study of viral mechanisms, treatment strategies. The grant from the NIH - the largest of its kind funding infectious diseases research at Ohio State - will fund their five-year pursuit of definitive answers.."

'The new work funded by the NIH will extend the investigation beyond the lungs based on predictions that in response to the viral infection, caspase 11 has compounding effects in multiple cells: driving up inflammation in the body and brain, interfering with the immune response and leading to clots in small blood vessels.'

'Many of the affected cells being investigated are related to the immune response – both the innate response, the body’s first line of defense against any foreign invader, and the adaptive response, which is a later, specific response to a given pathogen.'

Amal Amer, professor of microbial infection and immunity in Ohio State’s College of Medicine and the contact principal investigator on the grant: "this is especially needed for long COVID – it may be in the brain, it may be in the muscles, it may be in anything and everything – and that’s an important aspect of the disease."

'The group also involves other experts from Ohio State, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the University of Chicago.'

'Amer is an expert in innate immunity who has been studying the class of molecules called inflammasomes for years. She will lead studies of the role of caspase 11, which is an inflammasome-related enzyme, in causing inflammation in the brain..'

"..we have continuously worked together and published together on cutting-edge science,” she said. “And the NIH was convinced that this group is the one that can do this.”

 

Yes I’m sure starving to death is “bothersome”. It’s such crazy discrimination I hate it.

 

Merged thread

The Sick Times
Q&A: NIH Director Dr. Monica Bertagnolli on next steps for RECOVER, future Long Covid research plans, and more
https://thesicktimes.org/2024/08/13...er-future-long-covid-research-plans-and-more/

 

"Transitioning into a long-term project will teach us so much that we need to learn about the post-infectious complications for Covid, and ME/CFS, chronic Lyme disease, all of these chronic conditions"

I suspect there are people at the NIH that are apoplectic that she said "chronic Lyme disease." I hope that's an encouraging sign.

ETA: Of course another way to read those signs is that lumping all the contested and controversial - and potentially expensive - diseases together, even casually, may not bode well at all.

 

Other than this stuff being talked about by the NIH director being significant, it's hard to take it seriously until there is real action matching them. It makes a strong record for the inevitable disappointment, for when facts actually start to matter.

It sounds sincere, but all I see is talk. The work being done so far has either been mediocre, or serves only to independently validate what was known for years and has been poo-pooed away with extreme prejudice. Which is very significant. Or would be, in a world where facts overrule feelings, where the scientific process matters more than hyping some BS pseudoscience that sounds too good to be true, definitely is, but that no one seems to care anyway.

It's the fact that there is still no appropriate reaction that doesn't inspire confidence. This is a major scandal. Top 10 in the history of medicine for sure. It should be getting a major reaction, chills down millions of spines from the knowledge of what they did. And it still barely gets a blip, everyone is just waiting to see where the chips fall, and if they don't align, I don't see more than the same few with a personal stake doing more than the bare minimum, then get bored and drop it entirely.

I very much look forward to being proven wrong. I just have a very long streak of being right about this going on...