Nature Microbiology Editorial: Connecting the dots from viral infection to disease, 2023

more at link.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01452-5

 

Uh, no, I don't think we can say that anymore. Which makes this:

especially damning. Having just abandoned everything having to do with COVID is just incredible mass failure. It's completely unprecedent for an expert profession to just give up like this, about something they know is important.

So much politics.

 

"How to unravel the complexities of virus-induced diseases, such as Long Covid and ME/CFS."

This is an excellent editorial, and I wish I knew who its authors were.

In a nutshell: linking viruses to long-term disease is complex, but with careful and smart research, it can be done.

Two examples of the problems linking viruses to diseases:

1. Distinguishing cells that are engulfing/destroying viruses from those that are truly infected.

For instance, macrophages play a key role in engulfing and destroying viruses. As a result, these cells include virus proteins and nucleic acid, but this doesn't mean an individual or a tissue is infected. However, there are biomolecular methods that can identify exactly what is happening.

2. Understanding the link between infection and symptoms.

Herpes Simplex viruses, HSVs, can cause severe brain infection and some patients continue to suffer from neurological symptoms despite treatment with antivirals. Careful research helped tease out what was happening, along with the observation that that anti-inflammatory drugs can alleviate post-HSV symptoms.

"In this case, while HSV infection is the trigger, prolonged inflammation is the cause of the symptoms."

The editorial concludes that disentangling the specific role of a virus in a long-term disease is extremely complex, but large cohort studies can be helpful.

It gives the example of both long Covid and ME/CFS, saaying that both have been linked to the Epstein-Barr virus, for ME/CFS, the evidence is not definitive (I'm not sure that's quite fair), while a large longitudinal study in the long Covid using multi-omics approach provided stronger links that Epstein-Barr virus is a risk for developing long Covid.

I hope this editorial is a sign that more virologists are taking Long Covid and MEcfs seriously.

A view from @chillier would be welcome.

 

Presumably it is one, or more, of the journal editors listed here, https://www.nature.com/nmicrobiol/editors