3 ms·

> These infections can cause long-term damage via [...] reactivation of a latent pathogen that begins reproducing again in times of stress. Oddly, Quanta Magaz

> These infections can cause long-term damage via [...] reactivation of a latent pathogen that begins reproducing again in times of stress. Oddly, Quanta Magazine's article doesn't mention recent research indicating that COVID is reactivating the Epstein-Barr virus in COVID patients and that this is likely responsible for a large proportion of "long COVID" symptoms. From the study's abstract: > Our aim was to first determine long COVID prevalence in 185 randomly surveyed COVID-19 patients and, subsequently, to determine if there was an association between occurrence of long COVID symptoms and reactivation of Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) in 68 COVID-19 patients recruited from those surveyed. We found the prevalence of long COVID symptoms to be 30.3% (56/185), which included 4 initially asymptomatic COVID-19 patients who later developed long COVID symptoms. Next, we found that 66.7% (20/30) of long COVID subjects versus 10% (2/20) of control subjects in our primary study group were positive for EBV reactivation based on positive titers for EBV early antigen-diffuse (EA-D) IgG or EBV viral capsid antigen (VCA) IgM. The difference was significant (p < 0.001, Fisher’s exact test). A similar ratio was observed in a secondary group of 18 subjects 21–90 days after testing positive for COVID-19, indicating reactivation may occur soon after or concurrently with COVID-19 infection. https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens10060763 https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens10060763 (open-access) ** Editing to add a caution that MDPI, the publisher of Pathogens, isn't a particularly well-regarded publisher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI

pjc50 5y ago
Interesting; one thing though: 1 World Organization, Watkinsville, GA 30677, USA 2 Department of Public Health, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, Kahramanmaraş 46040, Turkey 3 Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA 4 College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA One of these authors is not like the others.
- geofft 5y ago
  That is a little confusing, "World Organization" seems to be a pet rescue charity? I'm trying to figure out what the guy's interest is, how he is doing this research, and why academically-affiliated researchers are working with him (because that's potentially a positive sign for legitimacy). Apparently he previously authored a study saying that the MMR vaccine could keep people safe from covid: https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/mBio.02628-20 https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/mBio.02628-20 The Daily Beast of all places has a pretty negative article which as a bit of a profile of him: https://www.thedailybeast.com/beware-this-covid-19-vaccine-study-from-an-80s-teen-tech-titan-and-a-carnivorous-plant-smuggler https://www.thedailybeast.com/beware-this-covid-19-vaccine-s... I don't know enough about this field to know if any of the journals involved are reputable.
- murphyslab 5y ago
  Alternatively, none of those authors is like the others! 1. Independent researcher (USA) 2. Public health researcher with a few odd publications (Turkey) 3. A university-associated physician in internal medicine, who's only publications are with this group. (USA) 4. A university professor with expertise in immunology and vaccinations. The urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought some rather unusual partnerships, so while in a normal world it would be weird and surprising, it's also not entirely weird and surprising given other alliances brought together by COVID.
__turbobrew__ 5y ago
Interesting read. From a layman's point of view the main issue I have with this study is that they have a selection bias to select those who have had severe COVID symptoms. "Subjects were chosen from applicants who responded to online advertisements seeking recovered COVID-19 patients for this study." Those who had asymptomatic/mild COVID symptoms might not even know they had COVID and they therefore would not apply to participate in the study. This biases the applicant pool to those who had severe enough COVID symptoms to either go to a hospital or get tested. For the duration of the pandemic I have always advocated that COVID related studies should take random samples from the general population instead of selecting patients which are known to have COVID. Of course it would be much more work to pick a random 10000 people from the general population to participate in your study, but I think it would give better insight into the asymptomatic or mild COVID cases which would not be selected for a trial since the applicant themselves doesn't know they have COVID. Generally, studies with the selection bias make COVID look worse since the mild/asymptomatic cases are ignored.

pjc50 5y ago

Interesting; one thing though: 1 World Organization, Watkinsville, GA 30677, USA 2 Department of Public Health, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, Kahramanmaraş 46040, Turkey 3 Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA 4 College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA One of these authors is not like the others.

geofft 5y ago
That is a little confusing, "World Organization" seems to be a pet rescue charity? I'm trying to figure out what the guy's interest is, how he is doing this research, and why academically-affiliated researchers are working with him (because that's potentially a positive sign for legitimacy). Apparently he previously authored a study saying that the MMR vaccine could keep people safe from covid: https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/mBio.02628-20 https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/mBio.02628-20 The Daily Beast of all places has a pretty negative article which as a bit of a profile of him: https://www.thedailybeast.com/beware-this-covid-19-vaccine-study-from-an-80s-teen-tech-titan-and-a-carnivorous-plant-smuggler https://www.thedailybeast.com/beware-this-covid-19-vaccine-s... I don't know enough about this field to know if any of the journals involved are reputable.
murphyslab 5y ago
Alternatively, none of those authors is like the others! 1. Independent researcher (USA) 2. Public health researcher with a few odd publications (Turkey) 3. A university-associated physician in internal medicine, who's only publications are with this group. (USA) 4. A university professor with expertise in immunology and vaccinations. The urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought some rather unusual partnerships, so while in a normal world it would be weird and surprising, it's also not entirely weird and surprising given other alliances brought together by COVID.

__turbobrew__ 5y ago

Interesting read. From a layman's point of view the main issue I have with this study is that they have a selection bias to select those who have had severe COVID symptoms. "Subjects were chosen from applicants who responded to online advertisements seeking recovered COVID-19 patients for this study." Those who had asymptomatic/mild COVID symptoms might not even know they had COVID and they therefore would not apply to participate in the study. This biases the applicant pool to those who had severe enough COVID symptoms to either go to a hospital or get tested. For the duration of the pandemic I have always advocated that COVID related studies should take random samples from the general population instead of selecting patients which are known to have COVID. Of course it would be much more work to pick a random 10000 people from the general population to participate in your study, but I think it would give better insight into the asymptomatic or mild COVID cases which would not be selected for a trial since the applicant themselves doesn't know they have COVID. Generally, studies with the selection bias make COVID look worse since the mild/asymptomatic cases are ignored.