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

Thanks @Kitty and @Snow Leopard. That helps a lot.

 

Very strong correlation with age. Tight standard deviation.

The 70+ is interesting, probably because at this point standard tools lose much of their relevance in a population that already has significant disability.

 

Maybe PVFSs aren’t more common in women than men, but those who don’t recover and eventually get diagnosed ME then it becomes the high female-to-male ratio we see in ME (which is a similar ratio seen in many known autoimmune disorders).

 

Yes, it is infuriating. Post viral fatigue isn't rare indeed. Being fatigued and ill for several months after a virus is very common and still nobody cares and there's no research.

It is very interesting to figure out if PVFS and CFS are the same thing or not. I believe figuring out why post viral fatigue occurs in some people and not in others might unlock they key to figuring out CFS. Hopefully long covid will spark at least a little interest into PVF syndromes and CFS.

 

I don't agree with that. My illness started with a viral infection. For the first 12 years or so I did not have (noticeable) PEM. I had plenty of neurological symptoms and severely reduced stamina / endurance, but not PEM (possibly because didn't push myself very hard, who knows). Then after those first 12 years, my condition gradualy started to deteriorate and soon after I started experiencing PEM.

So initially my illness did feel more like PVFS, but over time it has transformed into full blown CFS/ME, I've read of other people experiencing the same.

 

Re NYT article. I don’t know why Maureen Hansen was so stand-offish. If you meet the criteria for MECFS, then you have MECFS.

Also unfortunate that Amy P was cited—no evidence for her theories.

Also unfortunate that neither Ron Davis nor Robert Phair was cited in the article.

 

Long read because it’s NYT Magazine so not as newsy, traditionally comes with the Sunday NYT newspaper. Also it’s a “feature” article format, which I believe is their longest format reserved for leading articles in that issue.

 

Another feature article from the same issue:

NYT Magazine: My ‘Long Covid’ Nightmare: Still Sick After 6 Months

 

Was too long to read for me but it's possible to listen to it as a podcast, about 51min, which I did. Pretty good.

 

The neurological symptoms are not typical of PVS. PEM is a shorthand way of describing something that is going on and is not very accurate. A recent guideline for doctors says that they should ask their patients to watch out for a relationship between what they do and the symptoms they get. I had a lot of neurological problems when I was first ill and undiagnosed but it never occurred to me to relate episodes of loss of speech or paralysis with what I was doing three days before. Since I got so much worse and think in terms of PEM it is much easier to work out.

The CPET findings of a problem with cellular respiration in ME give a reason for a lot of what we call PEM and has not been found in any other illness so far. If that is ME, it will be present from the start even while someone is experiencing PVS from the infection. The PVS will go away but the cellular damage (or whatever) of ME will carry on getting worse until it is noticeable.

If the fatigue of PVS is keeping activity to a minimum then the ME will not have a noticeable effect on day to day life until you recover from it.

 

Sorry the ‘quotes’ are the wrong way around, I was trying to bring across a post I had made on a different thread.

In view of recent discussions here, I am now trying to say

2001 PVFS, 7 months housebound/approx 4 years recovery to 90-95 and

2013 Sepsis led to M.E. (CFS on medical records)

 

We all have different experiences. My experience is similar to yours, but I didn't have cognitive symptoms until after I was recovering from PVFS 6 years after viral onset. I started exercising again, which of course made me worse, that's when delayed PEM and the cognitive issues started.

I'm more disabled now from autonomic issues after relapsing from taking immune modulators which re-activated HHV6 and EBV at the same time back in 2001.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1352215492149313536

 

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/longCOVID
Includes some dismissive comments about “CFS” and still no interest from the quoted researchers about helping ME patients or acknowledging ME.. but they’re dying to step up to help LC.

“A lot of clinicians are sceptical of long COVID in people who haven’t had severe COVID, because of the experience with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS),” says Dr Nyarie Sithole, an infectious disease consultant and researcher in the University’s Department of Medicine. There has been much disagreement in the medical community over CFS – from its causes, diagnosis and treatment, to whether it’s even real.”

 

It's a pity that he didn't make clear where he stands on the issue of CFS. Safest to be on the fence.

 

'We know this is real': New clinics aid virus 'long-haulers'

https://apnews.com/article/new-york...ew-york-city-74bbc1b8433e936ba6a31c25d5f36873

In case anyone has any envy about what the LC clinics have to offer:

At the Jamaica Hospital program, patients get mental health assessments, a lung specialist’s attention and physical exams that delve deeper than most into their lifestyles, personal circumstances and sources of stress. Several hundred people have been treated so far, Roth said.

The idea is to help patients “build their own healing capacity,” said Dr. Wayne Jonas, former director of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Alternative Medicine. He is now with the Samueli Foundation, a California-based nonprofit that works with the hospital on marrying alternative ideas with conventional medicine.

The long-haulers get exercise and diet plans and group or individual mental health sessions. Recommendations for supplements, breathing exercises and meditation are also likely. That’s in addition to any prescriptions, referrals or primary care follow-ups that are deemed necessary.

“We’re not just saying, ‘It’s all in your head, and we’re going to throw herbs and spices at you,’” Roth said. With no tidy, proven answer for the complex of symptoms, “we do a common-sense approach and take the best of what’s out there to treat these people.”​

Not herbs and spices, just thoughts and prayers. That's just sure to work. Integrating CAM in medicine does not make CAM better, it only makes medicine worse and removes the only reason people should have to trust medicine: that it's supposed to be based on science and that experts don't just make stuff up or speak their personal opinion as if it were a fact.

Completely stuck in a loop. This is what an infinite loop looks like in real life.

Side note but I have no idea what a "physical exam that delves deeper into lifestyles, circumstances and sources of stress". What, like Phil Parker and his "diagnosing hands"?

 

I thought it was pretty clear. The entire controversy had been whether or not infections were relevant. LC settles that debate. Still, the line about what could possibly cause it or whether it's real. The message is very clear to me.

 

At least when sacrificing a chicken to the great spirits someone ends up with a chicken dinner.

Not sure what the benefit of this approach is, unless you happen to be a chicken.

 

I'm going to leave this here just in case I don't see it in my Youtube subscriptions, I will surely forget to look for it otherwise.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1351913993380614145


Edit: it's up: https://www.s4me.info/threads/possi...ovid-19-long-covid.14074/page-172#post-319428.