News from the USA, United States of America

University of Minnesota: "Study uncovers the basis of COVID-19-related brain fog"

"New research from the University of Minnesota found that COVID-19 triggers inflammation in the brain, which is linked to many COVID-related symptoms such as fatigue and “brain fog.”

"Published in Frontiers in Microbiology, the researchers examined the specific ways the virus impacts the brain, developing a preclinical model to accurately mimic the effects of COVID-19 on humans to explore the impact of age and sex on the brain-related impacts of the disease.

'The researchers also found several biological pathways that the virus impacts in the brain, including overactive or misdirected immune response, disruption to the protective blood-brain barrier, damage to cells lining blood vessels, and impacts to how nerve cells are formed and function.'

'In addition to new targeted therapies, these findings allow for more accurate vaccine development and continued research. The research team has a study underway that could shed light on the persistence of these symptoms in individuals experiencing long COVID, including the long-term impacts on neurocognitive behavior and memory loss.'

'This work was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging and the SURRGE award program of the University of Minnesota’s College of Pharmacy.'

Forum thread here: Impact of age and sex on neuroinflammation following SARS-CoV-2 infection in a murine model, 2024, Krishna et al
 
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(Via LinkedIn). 'A Longhauler's Open Letter To The Harris-Walz Campaign' by Scott Hugo

Excerpts:

'I am pleading with you to do the right thing - morally and politically - by committing at the Democratic Convention to advocating and fighting for COVID 19 longhaulers’

'Prior to being off work and on statutory leave due to Long COVID, I was serving as a Housing Justice Attorney in the Oakland City Attorney’s Office. It has been my dream job. Each day during Long COVID I wake up and recommit to my rehab and recovery..I want to return to work..’

'Now that I have regained the ability to write and “speak” - at least for now (and for minutes at a time) - I cannot be silent. I cannot be silent knowing how others are suffering, and even dying, because of this. I am pleading with you to speak up, too.’

'Vice President Harris and Governor Walz - you can be a source of hope, too. Please let longhaulers to know that the Harris-Walz Administration is their ally and advocate.'

'Existing organizations like the COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project, Body Politic, MEAction, and the Long COVID Alliance draw on the lived experiences of countless longhaulers and have developed expertise on this devastating illness. These organizations have strength in numbers. Please listen to them. Work with them. Fight alongside them.’

'Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, I believe you are in public service for the right reasons. You can not only do what is right but also what can help you win the election. Make us a backbone of your coalition. Please speak up for us. Please fight for us.’
 
9/5/24: 'Children’s National Hospital – NIAID Symposium 2024'

'A New Paradigm: Infection-Associated Chronic Illnesses Affecting Children'

September 5th agenda includes ME, LC, POTS, SFN, microclots, pathogen persistence and reactivation, immune dysregulation, microbiome and more

Speakers include NIAID Director Marrazzo, Avindra Nath, David Goldstein, Anne Louise Oaklander, David Putrino, Ian Simon and more
 
Dakota15 said:
University of Minnesota: "Study uncovers the basis of COVID-19-related brain fog"
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Yet another study pointing to neuroinflammation and BBB breach caused by peripheral inflammation. But it still doesn't explain LC that persists after the infection is gone. One could guess that the brain's innate immune system gets primed by the peripheral inflammation-induced neuroinflammation and then over-reacts to subsequent peripheral inflammation, but nobody has proven that yet. I'm still a believer that ME/CFS is hypersensitivity to peripheral inflammation though.
 
Interview with Alexandra Yonts, M.D., infectious diseases specialist at Children’s National Hospital about the Sept. 5th Conference

7/30/24: “Untangling the root of long COVID with research”

Excerpts:

'Understanding and treating long COVID is still in its early days, but Dr. Yonts is beginning to see trends, along with hope for symptom relief. She will present detailed data from a retrospective study of 254 post-COVID patients at the 2024 Children’s National-NIAID annual symposium, A New Paradigm: Infection-Associated Chronic Illnesses Affecting Children. She’ll discuss her findings on the patients’ symptoms at presentation, trajectory over time and a cluster analysis of symptom grouping. She gave an overview of her research and clinical work to Innovation District.'

'From the beginning and continuing to this day, severe fatigue is the most common reason kids come to our clinic, as is the case with adults. This ranges from marathon runners who can’t run a half-mile to those sleeping on the couch for 20 hours a day. We’re still researching the factors affecting this wide spectrum of symptoms.

Cognitive issues — often referred to as brain fog — are also significant. These can be seen as attention issues, such as difficulty remembering the alphabet in younger children or focusing in class for older children. Many kids have gastrointestinal problems like nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. There’s also a prevalence of dysautonomia, affecting functions like blood pressure and heart rate, often seen in conditions like POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome).'

Q: Where are we in our understanding of long COVID, and where do we need to go?

A: We have lots of data but don’t know how it fits together yet. Research shows ongoing immune reactions to viral particles, with some patients having spike antigen in their blood or stool long after infection. There’s also evidence of autoimmunity and endovascular dysfunction, but we don’t yet understand the connections. It seems like viral persistence might be the underlying problem, but we haven’t pinpointed it yet.

Q: How important is it for the community to come together for events like the Children’s National-NIAID symposium?

A: It’s absolutely critical. We need researchers, clinicians and patients to collaborate. Researchers bring scientific expertise, clinicians provide practical insights and patients share their lived experiences and priorities. Conversations like the Children’s National-NIAID symposium are crucial for collaboration, thoughtful study design, advocacy and building connections with the patient community to make them feel validated and heard.
 
Nightsong said:
a paper by two U.S. physicians who became long COVID patients, documenting their own stories and calling for better understanding and support
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Over these 3 years, I have seen many specialists and engaged in continuous efforts to evaluate different medications, therapies, and lifestyle changes to improve my health. Much of this response was driven by the dedicated study and compassion of my physicians. Some of it was driven by ideas mentioned on social media or in patient support groups. I began to finally understand the value of these forums for patients like me who were not finding complete symptom relief despite the best medical efforts.
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(No mention of ME/CFS.)
 
Lookout Santa Cruz: 'I’m one of the unknown number of people battling long COVID. We need to do more to understand this life-changing affliction.'

'UC Santa Cruz professor Rebecca A. London is among an estimated 7% to 30% of those infected with COVID-19 to develop post-COVID conditions.'

'Sen. Bernie Sanders just introduced a “moonshot” bill to allocate funds for research and education on long COVID. Yes, it’s past time.'

'Sometimes I wonder how my body could betray me to this extent because I have always treated it well. And other times, I marvel at the things it can still accomplish, even in this diminished state. And I know I am lucky – my long COVID has a diagnosis. Many others have symptoms that no one yet understands or knows how to treat.'
 
8/20, Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine: 'Finding Treatments for Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS' with Dr. Nancy Klimas and Cort Johnson

Klimas: 'The RECOVER Network...there wasn't a large university in the country that was left out of that application. 200 applications that involved multiple institutions, 248 I think. They all went in. Everybody went in for a RECOVER application. Think about what that means. New money, a lot of money. It just swept a vast number of new investigators that weren't there before.

I will say as one of the old investigators, it left us out because there was a decision not to compare ME/CFS to Long COVID in that in that money. So, those of us that put applications in that had said - hey what we have to offer is all this experience, and data, and bio-repositories and all this stuff that we know about ME/CFS wouldn't you like to have for the compared illness? They said we can't compare them. Why? Because they said duration of illness....

Well, now it's 2024 and 2020 people are still sick right - four years of illness - you know now they're long duration illness and all of a sudden there's actually quite a bit more interest in comparing to ME/CFS - so we're doing our Long COVID to ME/CFS study that's funded by the CDC, not by the NIH. It's a good study, intended to compare ME/CFS to Long COVID, that is it's intent - that is it's main hypothesis - what are the similarities and differences. But it took the CDC to actually fund that one. We had applied through the RECOVER Network, and that's what our critique showed.

[My fault - fixed the bio-repositories edit]
 
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WYNC, 8/20: 'Dr. Fauci On A Life Of Medical Research And Public Service'

Host (on COVID being endemic): '..that means we're going to still being seeing more cases of Long COVID, and isn't that the dangerous part of this..?

Fauci: "That is true..."

Host: "So, is there anything we can do about Long COVID? What do we know about it?"

Fauci: "We don't know a lot about it. There's a lot of people working on it, there's a lot of money being poured into. It looks like it's an aberrant, uncontrolled, inflammatory immunological response to what is likely fragments of virus that persist even after the acute infection, but it's not certain. There a lot of the theories, some are more convincing than others. One of the things that's a common dominator, is that the aberrant hyperimmune response that doesn't calm down after the acute phase of the viral infection."

Our thread on Fauci is here: Dr. Anthony Fauci on Long Covid and ME/CFS
 
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Dakota15 said:
8/20, Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine: 'Finding Treatments for Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS' with Dr. Nancy Klimas and Cort Johnson

Klimas: 'The RECOVER Network...there wasn't a large university in the country that was left out of that application. 200 applications that involved multiple institutions, 248 I think. They all went in. Everybody went in for a RECOVER application. Think about what that means. New money, a lot of money. It just swept a vast number of new investigators that weren't there before.

I will say as one of the old investigators, it left us out because there was a decision not to compare ME/CFS to Long COVID in that in that money. So, those of us that put applications in that had said - hey what we have to offer is all this experience, and data, and bio-suppositories and all this stuff that we know about ME/CFS wouldn't you like to have for the compared illness? They said we can't compare them. Why? Because they said duration of illness....

Well, now it's 2024 and 2020 people are still sick right - four years of illness - you know now they're long duration illness and all of a sudden there's actually quite a bit more interest in comparing to ME/CFS - so we're doing our Long COVID to ME/CFS study that's funded by the CDC, not by the NIH. It's a good study, intended to compare ME/CFS to Long COVID, that is it's intent - that is it's main hypothesis - what are the similarities and differences. But it took the CDC to actually fund that one. We had applied through the RECOVER Network, and that's what our critique showed.
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Pretty much as we suspected, they wasted 4 years by refusing to look at the forbidden knowledge. For ridiculous reasons. Not even a talking snake involved. Well OK maybe a few talking snakes but they have legs and are oddly humanoid in shape.

Probably wasted $1B in the process. I mean we saw it happen. Called it before it happened. Denounced while it was happening. Told them it would cause them to fail. And it's not going to make a difference, they're just going to excuse it and keep on failing.

What a ridiculous species we are. Overcommitted to making mistakes, rarely ever learning from them.

I'm seeing many pissed off responses from the LC community because of it, but what can they even do about it? Like all medical research it's completely opaque and secretive. Everything about us in secret behind closed doors, by them, for them. What an absurd way of doing anything.

A chuckle at bio-suppositories :laugh:.
 
KJZZ Phoenix: 'A groundbreaking study aims to determine if long COVID-19 could lead to another type of dementia'

'Dr. Marwan Sabbagh is the professor of Neurology at the Barrow Neurological Institute. He says one of the biggest complaints that people have, weeks or months after their COVID-19 symptoms have subsided, is brain fog or other issues, like memory loss.'

'So while the COVID-19 virus does not appear to cross the blood/brain barrier, "We initially thought so. Now we don't think so," he said. "But there is evidence of fragments or an inflammatory kind of a massive inflammatory response that occurs triggered by COVID. And those inflammatory markers we tend to notice in the brain."

"We are asking people to commit though. And to be clear on this, the commitment involves brain scans, PET scans, spinal tap, memory tests, twice in the span of two years," he explained. "So people who we want to sign up are people who are really committed to helping us find the answer to this problem."

"Sabbagh says there are currently no treatment guidelines for the management of the long-term effects of neurological COVID-19, which is why this study is so significant."
 
Dakota15 said:
Colorado Boulder: 'Long COVID link to cortisol and hair-trigger stress response explored’

Excerpts:

'The study was funded by the nonprofit PolyBio Research Foundation'

'Proteins left behind by COVID-19 long after initial infection can cause cortisol levels in the brain to plummet, inflame the nervous system and prime its immune cells to hyper-react when another stressor arises, according to new animal research by CU Boulder scientists.’

'To explore just how such antigens impact the brain and nervous system, the research team injected an antigen called S1 (a subunit of the “spike” protein) into the spinal fluid of rats and compared them to a control group.'

'After seven days, levels of the cortisol-like hormone corticosterone plummeted by 31% in the hippocampus of rats exposed to S1. That is the region of the brain associated with memory, decision making and learning. After nine days, levels were down 37%.’

“We show for the first time that exposure to antigens left behind by this virus can actually change the immune response in the brain so that it overreacts to subsequent stressors or infection,” said Frank.’

'He theorizes that the process might go something like this: COVID antigens lower cortisol, which serves to keep inflammatory responses to stressors in check in the brain. Once a stressor arises—whether it be a bad day at work, a mild infection or a hard workout—the brain’s inflammatory response is unleashed without those limits and serious symptoms come screaming back.’

'Rooting out the source of antigens—including tissue reservoirs where bits of virus continue to hide out—might also be an approach worth exploring.'

“There are many individuals out there suffering from this debilitating syndrome. This research gets us closer to understanding what, neurobiologically, is going on and how cortisol may be playing a role,” said Frank.
Click to expand...
Quite fascinating. They seem to be going in the same direction as Jared Younger--thinking a cause is neuroinflammation triggered by ordinary events after COVID dysregulates the immune system.
 
AZ Central: "Does long COVID cause a cognitive disorder? A $2.5 million Arizona study aims to find out"

'The study is funded by $2.5 million in federal American Rescue Plan money funded through Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs' office.'

'This study is necessary to determine whether long COVID-19 is a risk factor for developing its own cognitive disorder, said behavioral neurologist Dr. Marwan Sabbagh, who is co-principal investigator of the study and vice chair of research for Barrow’s Department of Neurology.'

"We're looking specifically for people who have known that they have brain fog and cognitive impairments," he said. "There are some people who have come to me and said they can't go back to work because they just can't remember and think as clearly as they did before."

In his practice as a behavioral neurologist in Barrow's Alzheimer’s and Memory Disorders Program, Sabbagh regularly sees patients who have had COVID-19 and now have a lingering "brain fog" that is impeding their lives.

"They can clearly say they were completely fine, they were doing fine, they got COVID, they got very sick from COVID and they've been having neurological problems ever since then — that would be the group I'm looking for," Sabbagh said.

Emerging research suggests a connection between COVID-19 and cognitive problems, but Sabbagh said it's been piecemeal and he wanted to do a well-structured, well-designed study "that looks at all the biomarkers and all the measures all together in a longitudinal manner."

"In the majority of people it goes away. In a handful of people it doesn't," he said. "And in people it doesn't — why? Why is it not clearing up?"
 
Colorado Public Radio: 'New CU Boulder study explores how low cortisol levels play a part in long COVID'

“We show for the first time that exposure to antigens left behind by this virus can actually change the immune response in the brain so that it overreacts..'

'He said more research is needed and noted humans obviously differ from rats. But this research, combined with more being done around the globe, could help scientists better understand the neurobiology of long COVID, and potentially develop medications and treatments someday.'

“So I really believe that this could be playing a role in the fatigue symptoms that most long COVID patients describe,” he said. “And of course, cortisol also plays a role in learning and memory. And so if this has been altered in some way in the brain, then it could be affecting how you're able to learn or memorize.”

'The study, funded by the PolyBio Research Foundation, was published this week in the journal Brain Behavior and Immunity.

More than 700,000 Coloradans may have been affected by long COVID..'
 
Neuroscience News: 'COVID’s Spike Protein Enhances Ability to Infect Brain'

'The new collaborative study between scientists at Northwestern University & the Univ. of Illinois-Chicago uncovered a series of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein..'

'Scientists have discovered a mutation in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, that plays a key role in its ability to infect the central nervous system.'

'The findings highlight the need for specific therapies to address these neurological complications.'

'It’s still not known if long COVID is caused by direct infection of cells in the brain or due to some adverse immune response that persists beyond the infection,” Hultquist said.'

“If it is caused by infection of cells in the central nervous system, our study suggests there may be specific treatments that could work better than others in clearing the virus from this compartment.”

'Funding for this study, “Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the murine central nervous system drives viral diversification,” was provided by the National Institutes of Health; the Department of Defense; and through institutional support for the Center for Pathogen Genomics and Microbial Evolution and the Northwestern University Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS).'
 
(Features now NIAID Director)

11/19/21, Alabama Political Reporter: “More than half of those with COVID suffer longer-lasting health problems”

Dr. Marrazzo: “…neurocognitive impairment..this COVID brain fog that people describe..fatigue..muscle weakness…these data are concerning..”

Marrazzo: “They really say that we are dealing with a real syndrome that these patients are suffering from. They’re suffering from something we don’t really understand.”

“The goal is to study those people for up to four years to gain understanding of long COVID, Marrazzo said. Those studies could begin in December.”
 
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