Article: What we now know about long COVID and our brains

[Sly Saint]

By Professor Tissa Wijeratne, University of Melbourne; Professor Meg Morris, La Trobe University; Associate Professor Leila Karimi, RMIT University; and Chanith Wijeratne, Monash University

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we’re learning more about the potential long-term impact of COVID-19 on the human brain.

Globally, millions of people have contracted COVID-19 over the past few years, and some have even caught the virus two or more times. Of more than 665 million cases worldwide, nearly one in every two people with COVID-19 is at risk of developing Post-COVID-19 Neurological Syndrome (PCNS).

Recurrent infections may also increase the risk of developing PCNS, so it’s important to understand the current status of PCNS because we’ve learned a lot about this debilitating condition since we started investigating PCNS in 2021.

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/what-we-now-know-about-long-covid-and-our-brains

 

[rvallee]

Nothing that couldn't have been written on day 1. In fact, literally learned nothing since then. How can people actually write about how nothing useful was learned, nothing that we didn't already know and warned about, and find nothing wrong with that?

The endless tolerance for failure in medicine is absurd, people can fail to deliver anything at all for decades and no one is bothered by that other than the people who are failed. It's as if the profession is no longer able to have ambition, is entirely demoralized at even trying.

Holy confusion, Batman:

Preliminary evidence does suggest that personalised rehabilitation and graduated exercise training may help certain people with PCNS to keep mobile.

Activity planning, cueing and pacing of physical activities can be trialed, as well as strategies to maintain strength and balance, conserve energy and manage fatigue.

These tactics for people with PCNS can be similar in their usefulness for managing chronic fatigue syndrome and myalgic encephalitis, along with therapeutic drugs repurposed from similar conditions – although more research is needed in this area.​

 

[RedFox]

I'd disagree we've learned nothing in 3 years. We've gathered many statistics on the prevalence and symptom picture of LC. We've determined that Covid affects the brain's structure in specific ways. We've found some signs of immune dysregulation. However, your frustration is understandable because we don't understand the biology enough to identify drug targets, let alone develop them. Our biggest hope is that some repurposed drug will help a little.

Preliminary evidence does suggest that personalised rehabilitation and graduated exercise training may help certain people with PCNS to keep mobile.

That's a facepalm. It's the only thing in the article that remotely references psychosomatic medicine.

 

[rvallee]

I'd disagree we've learned nothing in 3 years. We've gathered many statistics on the prevalence and symptom picture of LC. We've determined that Covid affects the brain's structure in specific ways. We've found some signs of immune dysregulation. However, your frustration is understandable because we don't understand the biology enough to identify drug targets, let alone develop them. Our biggest hope is that some repurposed drug will help a little.

Nothing we didn't know before, and certainly nothing that couldn't have been done a long time ago if people bothered. Some recent research confirmed many things, problem is no one is acting on them. It amounts to very little and nothing actionable because what has been confirmed is rejected, and because most research is still useless BPS fluff.

Professionals are supposed to and able to do a lot more than this. It's not normal to accomplish so little, our community has become so used to getting scraps we still want to say thank you even when the bowl of scraps is empty. None of this is about technical difficulties, it's lack of will and holding on to a failed ideology.