8 ms·

Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

98 points by luu 5y ago

mellosouls 5y ago
Previous version discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27569772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27569772 Related discussion on another study in the same area (covid effects on cognition) using alternative methods: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27939481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27939481
teorema 5y ago
This sort of thing is one of the more disturbing things to me about COVID-19, and why I wish there was a less exclusive focus on death in talking about the pandemic. Clearly that's important but there's these hugely significant problems not captured by focusing solely on death.
- gotoeleven 5y ago
  Is there some reason to expect that covid-19 is different in long term effects than a flu? This study is saying it causes substantial brain damage, right? What possible mechanism is there for this?
  - api 5y ago
    Inflammation?
  - undoware 5y ago
    Unlike the flu, SARS-CoV-2 causes micro-clots, which damage tissues that are capillary-heavy. This doesn't matter so much for, say, your liver, which (given time, and luck, and otherwise decent health) can recover, but matters greatly for your slow-growing brain, or your lungs (dat popcorn scan)
  - ajross 5y ago
    Lots of diseases result in nerve damage. Polio was famous for this, after all. Different viruses infect different tissues. This is why we don't like getting sick, and push vaccines where we can. Infectious diseases that don't have long term effects are actually comparatively few in numbers -- those are the ones we tend to "get sick" with, for the simple reason that they aren't worth the effort of trying to control. This "flu" thing just won't die. No one expert EVER likened covid to "the flu", beyond pointing out that, like Influenza, it presents as an upper respiratory infection. Everyone knew from that first cluster in Wuhan that this was much, much more dangerous. Everyone told you that. Everyone trustworthy, anyway. So why do you continue to insist, after nineteen months, that this is just "the flu"?
    - aaomidi 5y ago
      Adding onto this comment. A lot of viruses do really shitty things to you. HIV, HPV, etc etc And we've seen covid pass the BBB in mice. So expect more info like this.
    - dotcommand 5y ago
      > Everyone knew from that first cluster in Wuhan that this was much, much more dangerous. Everyone told you that. Everyone trustworthy, anyway. I hope you find the CDC to be trustworthy because the CDC says on their website that the flu is more dangerous than covid for young people. "For young children, especially children younger than 5 years old, the risk of serious complications is higher for flu compared with COVID-19." "However, for adolescents, the risk of serious COVID-19 illness is less than in children younger than 5." https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm I agree with you that there are people who cavalierly dismiss the dangers of covid. But there are also people who oversell and exaggerate the dangers as well. Both are doing a disservice to people and society in general in my opinion. Perhaps you meant covid is much more dangerous to some portions of the population while the flu was more dangerous to other portions of the population? Though I guess things could change in the future with more data and information.
      - ajross 5y ago
  - davidcbc 5y ago
    Is there some reason to expect covid is similar to the flu in long term effects? It's a different disease, why would it be the same?
  - Izkata 5y ago
    > What possible mechanism is there for this? Free-floating spike protein is capable of crossing the blood/brain barrier. It's one of the reasons some people are wary of the long-term side-effects of the vaccines.
    - rrock 5y ago
      I guess it’s a good thing that the vaccine makes spike protein within your deltoid muscle cells, so it can’t float over to your brain. And it all gets quickly degraded anyway.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sonicggg 5y ago
    Of course there is. Sars-Cov-2 has been labelled by one paper as "The Autoimmune Virus" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7598743 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7598743). There's way more molecular mimicry between this virus and our tissues than any flu virus. This is a recipe for long term autoimmune diseases.
NeutronStar 5y ago
> And while our results were not significant So what does this mean, need more research?
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  If you weren't aware, you're shadow-banned. You've been commenting into the void for over a year.
  - deviation 5y ago
    His post history looks fine and readable to me.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      Yeah people often have been shadow banned years ago, but commenting reasonably constructive things since not knowing almost nobody sees it. It’s sad.
      - jamiek88 5y ago
        he’s not shadow banned. We can all see his comments.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        You can see that one because I vouched for it. Can you not see a year or more of dead comments? Do you have show-dead enabled? Most users don’t.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - gruez 5y ago
      I'm seeing a ton of [dead] comments in his comments page. Maybe you don't have showdead enabled so you're only seeing the non dead comments?
reader_mode 5y ago
This is concerning, would be interesting to add post vaccination scans (to see if there are any similar effects triggered) and post vaccination post COVID exposure (to see if vaccination is protective)
resource0x 5y ago
Quote from https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-79959d313428d98ab8aa905bbe287ba0 https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-79959... "Citing new information about the variant’s ability to spread among vaccinated people, the CDC also recommended indoor masks for all teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools nationwide, regardless of vaccination status." If someone is vaccinated AND still spreading the virus, is it any different from having an asymthomatic case of COVID? According to the article, even an asymptomatic case carries a risk of brain damage. As a corollary, the vaccine may save you from the disease, but not from the brain damage. Is this a correct assessment?
- birken 5y ago
  As far as I'm aware, the answers to these questions is currently not known.
- ajross 5y ago
  > If someone is vaccinated AND still spreading the virus, is it any different from having an asymthomatic case of COVID? It carries about an order of magnitude lower risk of hospitalization or death, so... yes. Yes, it is very different. We don't know about long term effects, those are, y'know, long term and hard to study in this kind of timeframe. Which is why the linked article is notable. Also note that risk of transmission is about 10x lower (vs. delta, better vs. the older variants) for the vaccinated. So even if they're just as likely to see long term CNS issues from infection they're vastly less likely to be infected in the first place. I don't think this article changes the vaccine calculus at all. Get your shot. It's your best protection against everything to do with covid.
  - pintofthrowaway 5y ago
    It's hard for some of us, myself included. I'm a hospital physician in a suburban American hospital. I don't know a single physician who was even hospitalized with COVID-19. I know two physicians who died from the vaccine, one who bled to death with DIC in my care. I know of another in our area who is permanently disabled with transverse myelitis after the vaccine. I'm not alone, despite what you've heard generally about physicians, when I say I have some very controversial and unpopular opinions about vaccination of low-risk individuals, regardless of how that impacts the at-risk population. Selfish, yes, but in my opinion the reaction to this virus has been far more damaging than the virus itself. Throwaway for obvious reasons, as I would be fired for even sharing my opinions.
iroh2727 5y ago
If you lose smell, then the brain will shift smell-related resources to other functions. Any large-scale body damage should cause "brain damage," though it's possibly a little misleading to call it that (of course I'm not enough of a neuroscientist to know if that's all that's at play here). related: https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/a-new-theory-of-dreaming https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/a-new-theory-of-dreami...
- undoware 5y ago
  ...except that it's not nasal equipment that's damaged by SARS-CoV-2, it's the 'smell-related resources' themselves (in the brain) that go missing: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2766765 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2...
fawfawci 5y ago
Fauci has doled out $46M to 100 Chinese Institutions since 2012: https://dailycaller.com/2021/07/28/national-institutes-health-chinese-subgrants/ https://dailycaller.com/2021/07/28/national-institutes-healt... Arrest Fauci now!
zaphirplane 5y ago
This is not anti vac comment How the vaccine cause a similar lighter effect ?

98 points by luu 5y ago

Previous version discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27569772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27569772 Related discussion on another study in the same area (covid effects on cognition) using alternative methods: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27939481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27939481

teorema 5y ago

This sort of thing is one of the more disturbing things to me about COVID-19, and why I wish there was a less exclusive focus on death in talking about the pandemic. Clearly that's important but there's these hugely significant problems not captured by focusing solely on death.

gotoeleven 5y ago
Is there some reason to expect that covid-19 is different in long term effects than a flu? This study is saying it causes substantial brain damage, right? What possible mechanism is there for this?
- api 5y ago
  Inflammation?
- undoware 5y ago
  Unlike the flu, SARS-CoV-2 causes micro-clots, which damage tissues that are capillary-heavy. This doesn't matter so much for, say, your liver, which (given time, and luck, and otherwise decent health) can recover, but matters greatly for your slow-growing brain, or your lungs (dat popcorn scan)
- ajross 5y ago
  Lots of diseases result in nerve damage. Polio was famous for this, after all. Different viruses infect different tissues. This is why we don't like getting sick, and push vaccines where we can. Infectious diseases that don't have long term effects are actually comparatively few in numbers -- those are the ones we tend to "get sick" with, for the simple reason that they aren't worth the effort of trying to control. This "flu" thing just won't die. No one expert EVER likened covid to "the flu", beyond pointing out that, like Influenza, it presents as an upper respiratory infection. Everyone knew from that first cluster in Wuhan that this was much, much more dangerous. Everyone told you that. Everyone trustworthy, anyway. So why do you continue to insist, after nineteen months, that this is just "the flu"?
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    Adding onto this comment. A lot of viruses do really shitty things to you. HIV, HPV, etc etc And we've seen covid pass the BBB in mice. So expect more info like this.
  - dotcommand 5y ago
    > Everyone knew from that first cluster in Wuhan that this was much, much more dangerous. Everyone told you that. Everyone trustworthy, anyway. I hope you find the CDC to be trustworthy because the CDC says on their website that the flu is more dangerous than covid for young people. "For young children, especially children younger than 5 years old, the risk of serious complications is higher for flu compared with COVID-19." "However, for adolescents, the risk of serious COVID-19 illness is less than in children younger than 5." https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm I agree with you that there are people who cavalierly dismiss the dangers of covid. But there are also people who oversell and exaggerate the dangers as well. Both are doing a disservice to people and society in general in my opinion. Perhaps you meant covid is much more dangerous to some portions of the population while the flu was more dangerous to other portions of the population? Though I guess things could change in the future with more data and information.
    - ajross 5y ago
- davidcbc 5y ago
  Is there some reason to expect covid is similar to the flu in long term effects? It's a different disease, why would it be the same?
- Izkata 5y ago
  > What possible mechanism is there for this? Free-floating spike protein is capable of crossing the blood/brain barrier. It's one of the reasons some people are wary of the long-term side-effects of the vaccines.
  - rrock 5y ago
    I guess it’s a good thing that the vaccine makes spike protein within your deltoid muscle cells, so it can’t float over to your brain. And it all gets quickly degraded anyway.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sonicggg 5y ago
  Of course there is. Sars-Cov-2 has been labelled by one paper as "The Autoimmune Virus" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7598743 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7598743). There's way more molecular mimicry between this virus and our tissues than any flu virus. This is a recipe for long term autoimmune diseases.

NeutronStar 5y ago

> And while our results were not significant So what does this mean, need more research?

chrisseaton 5y ago
If you weren't aware, you're shadow-banned. You've been commenting into the void for over a year.
- deviation 5y ago
  His post history looks fine and readable to me.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    Yeah people often have been shadow banned years ago, but commenting reasonably constructive things since not knowing almost nobody sees it. It’s sad.
    - jamiek88 5y ago
      he’s not shadow banned. We can all see his comments.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        You can see that one because I vouched for it. Can you not see a year or more of dead comments? Do you have show-dead enabled? Most users don’t.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - gruez 5y ago
    I'm seeing a ton of [dead] comments in his comments page. Maybe you don't have showdead enabled so you're only seeing the non dead comments?

reader_mode 5y ago

This is concerning, would be interesting to add post vaccination scans (to see if there are any similar effects triggered) and post vaccination post COVID exposure (to see if vaccination is protective)

resource0x 5y ago

Quote from https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-79959d313428d98ab8aa905bbe287ba0 https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-79959... "Citing new information about the variant’s ability to spread among vaccinated people, the CDC also recommended indoor masks for all teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools nationwide, regardless of vaccination status." If someone is vaccinated AND still spreading the virus, is it any different from having an asymthomatic case of COVID? According to the article, even an asymptomatic case carries a risk of brain damage. As a corollary, the vaccine may save you from the disease, but not from the brain damage. Is this a correct assessment?

birken 5y ago
As far as I'm aware, the answers to these questions is currently not known.
ajross 5y ago
> If someone is vaccinated AND still spreading the virus, is it any different from having an asymthomatic case of COVID? It carries about an order of magnitude lower risk of hospitalization or death, so... yes. Yes, it is very different. We don't know about long term effects, those are, y'know, long term and hard to study in this kind of timeframe. Which is why the linked article is notable. Also note that risk of transmission is about 10x lower (vs. delta, better vs. the older variants) for the vaccinated. So even if they're just as likely to see long term CNS issues from infection they're vastly less likely to be infected in the first place. I don't think this article changes the vaccine calculus at all. Get your shot. It's your best protection against everything to do with covid.
- pintofthrowaway 5y ago
  It's hard for some of us, myself included. I'm a hospital physician in a suburban American hospital. I don't know a single physician who was even hospitalized with COVID-19. I know two physicians who died from the vaccine, one who bled to death with DIC in my care. I know of another in our area who is permanently disabled with transverse myelitis after the vaccine. I'm not alone, despite what you've heard generally about physicians, when I say I have some very controversial and unpopular opinions about vaccination of low-risk individuals, regardless of how that impacts the at-risk population. Selfish, yes, but in my opinion the reaction to this virus has been far more damaging than the virus itself. Throwaway for obvious reasons, as I would be fired for even sharing my opinions.

iroh2727 5y ago

If you lose smell, then the brain will shift smell-related resources to other functions. Any large-scale body damage should cause "brain damage," though it's possibly a little misleading to call it that (of course I'm not enough of a neuroscientist to know if that's all that's at play here). related: https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/a-new-theory-of-dreaming https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/a-new-theory-of-dreami...

undoware 5y ago
...except that it's not nasal equipment that's damaged by SARS-CoV-2, it's the 'smell-related resources' themselves (in the brain) that go missing: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2766765 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2...

fawfawci 5y ago

Fauci has doled out $46M to 100 Chinese Institutions since 2012: https://dailycaller.com/2021/07/28/national-institutes-health-chinese-subgrants/ https://dailycaller.com/2021/07/28/national-institutes-healt... Arrest Fauci now!

zaphirplane 5y ago

This is not anti vac comment How the vaccine cause a similar lighter effect ?