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

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Great interview with Jamie Seltzer

Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine Understanding ME/CFS and Long COVID as Post-Viral Conditions

Quote:

The experience of patients whose COVID-19 symptoms persist for four weeks or more—Long COVID or post-COVID syndrome—has led to renewed interest in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (MF/CFS), an illness with symptoms similar to Long COVID. Both conditions involve uncertainty regarding diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis and are subject to ongoing research. Organizations worldwide, including the National Institutes of Health in the United States, are exploring the possible connections between Long COVID, ME/CFS, and other similar conditions.

To better understand ME/CFS and its connection to Long COVID, Susan Carr, Senior Writer for ImproveDx, recently talked with Jaime Seltzer. In a plenary session at the 14th annual Diagnostic Error in Medicine conference, Seltzer explored the similarities and differences between Long COVID, ME/CFS, and other conditions that a viral infection may trigger. Seltzer, diagnosed with ME/CFS in 2015, is Director of Scientific and Medical Outreach at #MEAction, an international nonprofit focused on education, research, and advocacy for people with ME/CFS. She also consults on several research projects at Stanford University, including some with Professor Ronald Davis, PhD, director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center and ME/CFS researcher, whose son, Whitney, is severely ill with ME/CFS.
 
Posting mostly because it seems to refer to a research program that will waste money researching something poorly. Reaching 2 years into this and these geniuses seem to think that pwLC aren't already self-managing and if anything useful came out of it it would have been obvious. Or fail to understand that they are self-managing because medicine has nothing useful to offer, something that somehow hardly anyone is angry about.

No details but basing on precedent, it will be poor and conclude vague things of no use.


Long COVID and self-management
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02798-7/fulltext

Self-management of symptoms in the long term is often costly, with some individuals using a substantial proportion of their income, which threatens to widen existing health inequalities. Further inequalities include geographical disparities in access to clinics for long COVID, access to private health care, and health literacy.

Research is needed to understand the self-management practices that are being used to manage long COVID symptoms; factors influencing their uptake; and the benefits, harms, and costs. There is also a need to assess the potential harmful effects of polypharmacy and drug–drug interactions in these individuals. The Therapies for Long COVID (TLC) Study (ISRCTN15674970) will begin to explore self-management practices through a survey of people with long COVID. This study aims to be a first step towards understanding this important and under-researched public health issue.​

It's funny that this article has a pejorative framing of patients seeking help on social media when it's the only place most pwLC did find help, help that completely contradicted the dominant narrative from medicine. And most likely the self-management will take form of... CBT, or whatever. Because presenting the problem as the solution to the problem is apparently normal and good for some people.
 
Governments insurance companies and even publicly paid medical professionals are hoping every person with a chronic condition will stop bothering them . so of course they want to perpetuate the idea that patients can self manage their conditions . In reality of course patients cannot because of the power that the medical profession has in justifying a patients supposed entitlement to the benefits system . try telling the d w p that the reason you have such limited evidence for your incapacitating disease is because of the drive to make patients disappear through so called self management /ableism .I am aware some diseases have systems in place for self management diabetes for instance but that still comes with regular monitoring and medical in put .
 


"The scandal is not that people have proposed psychological theories explaining both conditions. The scandal is that some continue to promote them even though they for long have been empirically falsified."

The scandal is that these theories were not even properly tested before being widely applied in clinical practice, medico-legal and policy advice, and promoted in the mainstream media.

The proponents didn't even think they had to properly test them (beyond some token effort). They had to be dragged into doing so, and then denied the evidence from their own trials.
 
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The long-term neurologic consequences of COVID-19

"Studies have shown similarities of long COVID symptoms with those observed in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)."

"Unfortunately, like long COVID, ME/CFS too is poorly understood and lacks effective disease-modifying therapies (DMTs), and more research into Long Covid could also be advantageous for ME/CFS patients"
 
I've been taking part in the ONS (Office for National Statistics) Covid study involving both a swab test for Covid-19 and a blood test for anti-bodies to the virus for the last 18 months. This involves a monthly visit from them to collect the samples and ask a multitude of questions about social contacts and symptoms etc. But today for the first time I was asked the question "Do you think you are suffering from Long Covid?". So it looks like they are beginning to collect data about LC to add to the existing data. Let's hope they continue to collect this data for some time to come.
 
UCSF Magazine: The Long Haul

"An all-hands-on-deck research effort gave UCSF scientists early insight into long COVID. It also showed patients that they weren’t in the fight alone."

"The sudden scientific interest in viruses due to the pandemic could also shed light on other illnesses possibly triggered by viral infections, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis (formerly called chronic fatigue syndrome)."
 
Long Covid: doctors find 'antibody signature' for patients most at risk

Blood tests on the participants showed that those who developed long Covid – also known as post-acute Covid-19 syndrome (Pacs) – tended to have low levels of the antibodies IgM and IgG3. When Covid strikes, IgM ramps up rapidly, while IgG antibodies rise later and provide longer-term protection.

Dr David Strain, a clinical senior lecturer at the University of Exeter medical school and the British Medical Association’s lead on long Covid, said the study was a step towards better understanding long Covid. The antibody signature identified by the Swiss researchers was similar to that seen in myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME, he said, a condition that affects a quarter of a million people across the UK. “Further comparisons between these diseases may allow mutual benefit and cross-pollination of ideas as the learnings from each benefit the other,” he said.


https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/25/doctors-find-antibody-signature-long-covid


IgG3 also mentioned in this ME/CFS study
https://www.s4me.info/threads/evalu...e-syndrome-2021-lutz-et-al.22417/#post-374646

A total of 17.6% of the ME/CFS patients had an unclassified antibody deficiency, with IgG3 and IgG4 subclass deficiencies as the most common phenotypes.
 
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Washington Post: CDC is asked to release race and gender data on long covid

“People suffering from Long covid have been ignored and overlooked for far too long. Collecting and publishing robust, disaggregated demographic data will help us better understand this illness and ensure that we are targeting lifesaving resources to those who need them most,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who co-signed the letter Tuesday to the CDC, said in an emailed statement. “We’re calling on the CDC to publicly report this data because that which gets measured gets done — and we can’t have an equitable recovery from this pandemic without it.”

"Health-care providers say governments and health systems don’t have solid information on how many people are plagued by various combinations of fatigue, pain, racing heartbeat, spiking blood pressure, brain fog, shortness of breath, gastrointestinal disorders and other lingering problems months or even a year or more after their initial infection."
 
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John Mac said:
Long Covid: doctors find 'antibody signature' for patients most at risk

Blood tests on the participants showed that those who developed long Covid – also known as post-acute Covid-19 syndrome (Pacs) – tended to have low levels of the antibodies IgM and IgG3. When Covid strikes, IgM ramps up rapidly, while IgG antibodies rise later and provide longer-term protection.

Dr David Strain, a clinical senior lecturer at the University of Exeter medical school and the British Medical Association’s lead on long Covid, said the study was a step towards better understanding long Covid. The antibody signature identified by the Swiss researchers was similar to that seen in myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME, he said, a condition that affects a quarter of a million people across the UK. “Further comparisons between these diseases may allow mutual benefit and cross-pollination of ideas as the learnings from each benefit the other,” he said.


https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/25/doctors-find-antibody-signature-long-covid


IgG3 also mentioned in this ME/CFS study
https://www.s4me.info/threads/evalu...e-syndrome-2021-lutz-et-al.22417/#post-374646

A total of 17.6% of the ME/CFS patients had an unclassified antibody deficiency, with IgG3 and IgG4 subclass deficiencies as the most common phenotypes.
Click to expand...


Something similar was found in Hungary too a few months ago, although using a shorter time frame. And they also mentioned the similarities with ME/CFS. I posted it here: Severe Fatigue and Memory Impairment Are Associated with Lower Serum Level of Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies in pw Post-COVID (...), 2021, Molnar et al

Edit: This would also be a good explanation for that terrible study that was trying to prove that covid long haulers didn't even really have covid.
 
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(also not sure if posted)

NYT: "New Research Hints at 4 Factors That May Increase Chances of Long Covid"

Paywall work-around: https://archive.fo/fkYXd

"That some patients had reactivated Epstein-Barr virus also made sense, Dr. Nath said, because other diseases have reawakened that virus, and its reactivation has been linked to conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome, which some cases of long Covid resemble, and multiple sclerosis. Dr. Deeks said it might be possible to give antivirals or immunotherapy to patients with reactivated Epstein-Barr virus."
 
Dakota15 said:
(also not sure if posted)

NYT: "New Research Hints at 4 Factors That May Increase Chances of Long Covid"

Paywall work-around: https://archive.fo/fkYXd

"That some patients had reactivated Epstein-Barr virus also made sense, Dr. Nath said, because other diseases have reawakened that virus, and its reactivation has been linked to conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome, which some cases of long Covid resemble, and multiple sclerosis. Dr. Deeks said it might be possible to give antivirals or immunotherapy to patients with reactivated Epstein-Barr virus."
Click to expand...

What antivirals would that be? From what I understand there are non to target EBV.
 
Petter Brodin, a researcher and professor of pediatric immunology at Karolinska in Sweden, who has been involved in biomedical ME studies, is quoted in a (paywalled) Swedish news article about long covid.

I'm surprised and very disappointed, I had no idea he held this kind of view :(
Auto-translate said:
"The third and more controversial hypothesis is that the disease [post covid] is psychosomatic in many people, i.e. there is no biological explanation.

- Personally, I think the truth lies somewhere in between, i.e. that a smaller group has obvious objective organ damage that we can measure and understand. Then there is a large group where residual more nondescript symptoms may well have a psychosomatic component. There are other explanations for why many people feel unwell," says Petter Brodin."
Click to expand...
Forskare: Fler kan få postcovid efter omikron
https://www.dn.se/vetenskap/forskare-fler-kan-fa-postcovid-efter-omikron/
 
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Daily Mail Long Covid expert says the world is in 'deep trouble'

quote:
Dr Leonard Jason is a psychology professor at Depaul University that works with long Covid patients. He told DailyMail.com that the potential of the Omicron wave causing the condition in so many survivors could have severe negative consequences long term.

‘That is gonna create all kinds of economic consequences, [and to] our health care system,' Jason said.

He told DailyMail.com that anywhere from ten to 30 percent of Covid survivors continue to suffer at least some symptoms long-term.

For even the more mild versions, where a person loses their sense of smell or has an occasional headache, dealing with the day-to-day impact of the condition can deteriorate their quality of life and hurt their ability to take part in regular activities.

Those that suffer more severe symptoms, like extreme fatigue, frequent body aches or sensory issues may be put out of work, causing strain to their loved ones.

Many will also require a caretaker, at least for a temporary period, which pulls another productive, functioning, member of society out of communities.

‘This will be a problem for society going forward... its hard for people to understand,' Jason added.
 
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