21 ms·
Covid-19 is causing a wide range of disorders in the nervous system
- zigzagzog 6y agoI got a bad headache last time I had the flu. I even had to take paracetamol.
- Eighth 6y agoAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
- Dumblydorr 6y agoThis virus is uncommonly indiscriminate in how many organ systems it damages. This may be due to its ability to deoxygenate a patient, systemic auto-immune response, systemic inflammation or vasculitis in organs, stroke like events with blood clots in multiple events, etc. What a beast of a virus!
- lbeltrame 6y agoOther coronaviruses can infect the nervous system. In fact, there were papers out in 2018 describing neural infections by "human coronavirus". Cytokine storms and their associated effects (like clotting ,etc.) are also present with other viral infections, like with the original Spanish Flu H1N1 strain (during the infamous "second wave"). "Regular" pneumonia can severely weaken you for months or a year, even if you have antibiotics. This virus is absolutely not a magic virus. It is novel, but it is still a coronavirus.
- pvaldes 6y agoThe problems could be related with the fact that pangolins have an unique and strange immune system. Reduced in comparison with most other mammals (but I'm speculating...)
- AstralStorm 6y agoThis virus definitely looks as if it had ample time to adapt to human host. Just many early cases were probably undetected or misattributed.
- lbeltrame 6y agoImmune systems are fairly differentiated across species, even for common mechanisms. Source: I worked from 2009 to 2011 in a project aiming at reconstructing part of these mechanisms in certain immune cells, and the differences between human and mice, where some models were made, were significant.
- jsight 6y agoMy frustration with articles like this is that they fail to point this out adequately. These problems are significant on their own, but they do not necessarily warrant this virus being treated differently from others. The things that warrant the separate treatment are still the high death rate, high hospitalization rate, and potential for large spread across a population with little existing immunity.
- alderz 6y agoAssociated papers: https://n.neurology.org/content/early/2020/06/01/WNL.0000000000009937 https://n.neurology.org/content/early/2020/06/01/WNL.0000000... https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/doi/10.1093/brain/awaa239/5869424 https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/doi/10.1093/brain/awa...
- el_don_almighty 6y agoLet me get this right... You significantly reduce the oxygen levels in a bunch of old people's brains for a month and they develop neurological issues? That is a remarkable finding. I would never have guessed.
- eganist 6y agoSomething to consider and also something not discussed in the article: it's very possible that sars-cov-2 can directly infect neurons directly considering the expression of ace2 receptors across them. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.07.030650v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.07.030650v1 So beyond the risk of kidney failure stemming from damaged cardiovascular tissue debris jamming up nephrons (as well as potential direct kidney infection by the virus) and beyond the risk of stroke from the uptick of platelets and the redistribution of the marrow cells which produce them across the body (somehow. I can't find the research that identified this), there's also the risk that the virus is actually directly attacking neurons. Not really a surprise considering how common ACE2 receptors are. --- I'm not a doctor. Not an epidemiologist either. Please fact-check me if I'm wrong.
- sradman 6y agoThat paper answers my first question, does neurological tissue have ACE2 receptors. The damage can also be a side-effect of oxygen deprivation. The existence of ACE2 receptors in the brain begs the question of how the SARV-CoV-2 virus crosses the blood-brain barrier. IIRC, dental surgery has been correlated to pathogens crossing the barrier. I wonder if that is a key factor here as well.
- guscost 6y agoNote that similar effects have been observed with other critical illnesses: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1301372 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1301372
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- tomhoward 6y agoIndeed, and as someone who is familiar with the condition often described as "we can't exactly work out what it is but I guess you could all it CFS/ME [1]", this is often linked to common viral infections including Epstein-Barr and cytomegalovirus. CFS/ME sufferers often exhibit some of the neurological symptoms mentioned in the article (though not the more extreme/terminal ones like stroke). Lyme disease sufferers also often exhibit these kinds of symptoms to some degree, which is why, in the absence of serology evidence, it can be difficult to distinguish from CFS/ME. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome
- avgDev 6y agoI just want to point out that in the US at least, infections are often treated with flouroquinolones and the side effects can result in fibro/cfs diagnosis. Symptoms can show up even at 12 months. I have met numerous people over the years, who were given cipro/levaquin just in case while they were waiting for blood test results and started having odd neurological symptoms lasting months or years. Later results turned out to be normal and no infection. The medical community has been failing most of these people and I am among them. Many report symptoms during their course and doctors rarely report the issue to the FDA. I have been to Mayo and other popular hospital systems and honestly sometimes I feel like there is a big conspiracy to protect the drug, it seems quite surreal. In Europe during EMA panel a few doctors spoke out and mentioned the issues their patients are dealing with. Some patients also described their symptoms: neurological issues, widespread muscle/tendon pain, insomnia. It sounds very similar to CFS/Fibro.
- gumby 6y agoPeople seem to have a naïve view of what “cured” means: someone “gets sick”, is treated, and then returns to the status quo ante. Thus there is little concern about catching the disease (or any disease) when you are not in an “at risk” group. But hospital discharge just means the treatment you get stops being worth the time/money. Ideally you finish convalescing at home. But any consequential damage isn’t ignored, as if you just had had a dented panel replaced on your car. Once I understood this error some of the discussion about dealing with the virus made sense.
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- irq11 6y agoDid you see the parts of the article where they say that the most severe, “consequential damage” is predominantly found in the elderly and most severely ill? You’re implying that people who have mild cases (>99% of all cases; remember: over 40% cases are so mild that they’re considered “asymptomatic”, and for every one case we detect, 10-20 others never even bother to be tested!) have some kind of neurological damage. That isn’t what this article says. Aside from a very tiny group who had strokes (again, mostly elderly), this research shows predominantly mild symptoms that (e.g. headache, insomnia), which would not be expected to persist. If you read past the headline, you will see that even this article makes it clear that the vast majority of patients have minimal symptoms: ” Another large-scale study, this one with 909 coronavirus patients in Madrid, showed that 90% of cases simultaneously experienced changes to, or the loss of, the sense of smell and taste. In most of these cases, these changes were the only clinical expression of coronavirus or were accompanied by other minor symptoms.”
- starkd 6y agoThe headline was indeed more inflammatory than the facts of the article. It seems like the media wants people to panic.
- irq11 6y ago....most of which are mild, and which accompany any virus: ”According to Segura, who co-authored the study, the most common symptoms experienced by coronavirus patients were myalgia, headaches and dizziness.” And the truly killer quote: ”Another large-scale study...showed that 90% of cases simultaneously experienced changes to, or the loss of, the sense of smell and taste. In most of these cases, these changes were the only clinical expression of coronavirus or were accompanied by other minor symptoms.”
- deelowe 6y agoThere is a reason we get so concerned when there is evidence of CNS infection. It's not as simple as "loss of smell."
- irq11 6y agoThe reason you “get so concerned” is because you are spreading fear, and you systematically attempt to censor anyone who points out that your fear isn’t supported by evidence.
- deelowe 6y agoDoes your statement change if I personally know several people who are ill and a few who have died? I have first hand experience. Do you? Yes, I am afraid, but that fear is backed by empirical evidence and my study of the science of this disease, not the media. You should be afraid as well.
- HeroOfAges 6y agoI personally only know of one person that has tested positive for Covid-19 and she recovered fully after about two weeks. Can you tell us more about the people you know that died due to Covid-19? General demographic info, like sex, age, that type of thing.
- matwood 6y ago
- pgo 6y agoMy family got corona positive last month, around the same time my brother started having some neurological issues. The doctors after seeing the MRI did not detect any issues. The same was confirmed by other radiologists and multiple other MRI scans over the month. Yet he faces these issues: nausea,headache,confusion,weakness,ataxia (unsteady walk) sensory changes, including numbness or tingling,trouble with vision (one eye doesn't move / change focus as much as quickly as the other eye ). All these issues point to a brain infection yet none is detected.
- shiftpgdn 6y agoDid your brother have any underlying health issues prior to contracting covid-19? Incl family history of any of these disorders, obesity, diabetes, etc?
- pgo 6y agoNo disorders, No family history of diseases except diabetes in a few older ones. All of us got over corona with just a little fever except him. Well we cant even say with confidence what is happening with him is due to corona, it could be two different diseases coinciding at the same time.
- libertine 6y agoI'm no doctor, but during this period I've experienced anxiety, and some of those symptoms match physical symptoms of anxiety. Nausea, headache, difficulty breathing, tight chest and neck (hell i've noticed even the fucking tongue was tight being pressed against the teeth and I didn't even realize that), tingling of hands/feet/arms, and during a spike you get confusion and you make poor decisions, heart bpm goes to 120 while sitting/laying down. So, just to mention to not discard that. In fact a lot of people are experiencing several degrees of anxiety during this period. None of us experienced this level of stress and anxiety before, the glimpse of uncertainty and the lack of control fucks our mind. One of the triggers I had was allergy (clogged nose), and other was when I saw news of people acting irresponsibly after me doing my part and giving up a lot of things to try to contain this (I'm not from the US, I'm from the EU).
- cs702 6y agoThis story is possibly the very last thing I wanted to read today. Nonetheless, I read it and upvoted it because I like to think of myself as a reality-facing optimist, as opposed to a wishful-thinking optimist. (The landscape of history is littered with the dead bodies of wishful-thinking optimists; I don't want to be one of them.) After reading this story, along with recent evidence that a substantial portion of covid-19 patients exhibit cardiac anormalities [a] and that herd immunity to covid-19 may be infeasible [b], I realize how little we actually know about this new disease. -- [a] https://academic.oup.com/ehjcimaging/article/doi/10.1093/ehjci/jeaa178/5859292 https://academic.oup.com/ehjcimaging/article/doi/10.1093/ehj... [b] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53315983 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53315983
- bananaface 6y agoYour conclusion about cardiac abnormalities is wrong, that's not what the study measured. They only looked at male patients aged 52-74, who were bad enough to be in hospital, and who had already been given an echocardiogram because there was an indicator, i.e. it's the subgroup that doctors deemed in need of a heart check because they were exhibiting symptoms like chest pain. The study indicates prevalence of abnormalities within those echoes - echoes from very ill people with symptoms of heart failure. They didn't take echoes for the study and they didn't run echoes on a random population.
- cs702 6y agoThanks. Corrected!
- bananaface 6y agoNo worries. :)
- TheBlight 6y agoSame can be said of the media's coverage of Covid-19.
- rurban 6y agoReplace Covid-19 with flu than you are right. Fever and T-cells can do a lot of damage. But thankfully they do mostly good things, killing the intruders.
- m0llusk 6y agoObserved blood clotting and prolonged low oxygen could explain much of this. Then add in the known toxic drugs being used in many cases. It could quite easily be that disease progression and treatment explain this without any direct action from the virus.