5 ms·

Couldn't we just prove this by brain-scanning long covid people and brain-scanning people who don't have long covid but lived through the pandemic anyways? My u

Couldn't we just prove this by brain-scanning long covid people and brain-scanning people who don't have long covid but lived through the pandemic anyways? My understanding is that long covid actually has measurable brain scan abnormalities that anxiety, depression, or whatever can't explain...

groby_b 4y ago
Alas, no. Research is starting to find biomarkers for long Covid. (IIRC, it's mostly antigen presence right now). That's part of the problem. We don't have clear biomarkers, we don't have a clear definition what it is, we don't have agreement what symptoms exactly are included, and we aren't even fully aligned on what "long" means. (>4 weeks? >6 weeks? >3 months?)
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  Post-exertional malaise (PEM) is probably the most agreed upon core symptom of LongCovid and is easy to test. Do a max exertion exercise two days apart, if the second one is nowhere near the first one then it’s likely you have PEM and LongCovid.
  - nradov 4y ago
    A two-day cardiopulmonary exercise test can be useful to diagnose ME/CFS regardless of whether it was caused by a SARS-CoV-2 infection or something else. But it's not definitive by itself. Maximum exercise capacity varies significantly day-to-day for the same individual based on nutrition, sleep, alcohol consumption, menstrual cycle, mental state, and other factors. In most test protocols they stop when the patient gives up, but some days people are just more willing to suffer and push through the pain to get a little farther. We can get some additional clues by looking at certain objective measures like HRV but even that isn't definitive. Long COVID is really more of a syndrome, a rough grouping of symptoms rather that a specific condition. It's so vague and covers such a wide range of different symptoms as to be clinically useless.
    - cjbgkagh 4y ago
      People with PEM won't get anywhere close to their original score. Those who have it bad won't even be able to get out of bed. Long Covid is ME/CFS re-branded. Some people / institutions muddy the water with other PASC organ damage but a real effort is being made to disambiguate it.
fzeroracer 4y ago
That's correct, we know that COVID can and does have an effect on the brain but we don't know the extent of what it does or how it relates to what people colloquially call Long COVID. That said, it's always disappointing to see people push quackery like dietary fixes or claiming it's just a sociological thing. Especially the sociological angle because it isn't just limited to places like the US (where I presume people are pushing the theory for political reasons). It appears in places regardless if they did full on lockdowns or did a more light touch like in Sweden. It makes me think that nowadays people would claim Shingles is fake and made up and unrelated to Chicken Pox.
- nyargh 4y ago
  Unsurprisingly the sociological origins for long covid are being pushed very hard in Sweden. Due to the nature of public health care and very narrow opinion corridor, this also means no care at all for LC for those affected.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
Virtually every qualified professional (by their opinion or their qualifications) jumped into the fight against COVID (and in some cases the fight against the fight against COVID). Long COVID is receiving a minute fraction of the attention because the risks are so much lower. Almost everyone’s gone back to their day jobs while governments, non profits, and corporations allocate resources by consensus as is done in peaceful times. High quality disease research takes place over years and decades through hundreds to thousands of studies. We’re still looking for a cure for HIV, long COVID could be harder to treat. We have no idea.
bsder 4y ago
There are two pieces here which need to be picked apart: 1) Does Long Covid exist differentially relative to others who went through the pandemic? 2) Has the medical establishment been sweeping aside a whole host of genuine complaints of unspecified origin that are now landing under "Long Covid"? What is becoming increasingly clear is that viruses suck worse than anybody thought, and we need to start paying attention to that.

groby_b 4y ago

Alas, no. Research is starting to find biomarkers for long Covid. (IIRC, it's mostly antigen presence right now). That's part of the problem. We don't have clear biomarkers, we don't have a clear definition what it is, we don't have agreement what symptoms exactly are included, and we aren't even fully aligned on what "long" means. (>4 weeks? >6 weeks? >3 months?)

cjbgkagh 4y ago
Post-exertional malaise (PEM) is probably the most agreed upon core symptom of LongCovid and is easy to test. Do a max exertion exercise two days apart, if the second one is nowhere near the first one then it’s likely you have PEM and LongCovid.
- nradov 4y ago
  A two-day cardiopulmonary exercise test can be useful to diagnose ME/CFS regardless of whether it was caused by a SARS-CoV-2 infection or something else. But it's not definitive by itself. Maximum exercise capacity varies significantly day-to-day for the same individual based on nutrition, sleep, alcohol consumption, menstrual cycle, mental state, and other factors. In most test protocols they stop when the patient gives up, but some days people are just more willing to suffer and push through the pain to get a little farther. We can get some additional clues by looking at certain objective measures like HRV but even that isn't definitive. Long COVID is really more of a syndrome, a rough grouping of symptoms rather that a specific condition. It's so vague and covers such a wide range of different symptoms as to be clinically useless.
  - cjbgkagh 4y ago
    People with PEM won't get anywhere close to their original score. Those who have it bad won't even be able to get out of bed. Long Covid is ME/CFS re-branded. Some people / institutions muddy the water with other PASC organ damage but a real effort is being made to disambiguate it.

fzeroracer 4y ago

That's correct, we know that COVID can and does have an effect on the brain but we don't know the extent of what it does or how it relates to what people colloquially call Long COVID. That said, it's always disappointing to see people push quackery like dietary fixes or claiming it's just a sociological thing. Especially the sociological angle because it isn't just limited to places like the US (where I presume people are pushing the theory for political reasons). It appears in places regardless if they did full on lockdowns or did a more light touch like in Sweden. It makes me think that nowadays people would claim Shingles is fake and made up and unrelated to Chicken Pox.

nyargh 4y ago
Unsurprisingly the sociological origins for long covid are being pushed very hard in Sweden. Due to the nature of public health care and very narrow opinion corridor, this also means no care at all for LC for those affected.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago

Virtually every qualified professional (by their opinion or their qualifications) jumped into the fight against COVID (and in some cases the fight against the fight against COVID). Long COVID is receiving a minute fraction of the attention because the risks are so much lower. Almost everyone’s gone back to their day jobs while governments, non profits, and corporations allocate resources by consensus as is done in peaceful times. High quality disease research takes place over years and decades through hundreds to thousands of studies. We’re still looking for a cure for HIV, long COVID could be harder to treat. We have no idea.

bsder 4y ago

There are two pieces here which need to be picked apart: 1) Does Long Covid exist differentially relative to others who went through the pandemic? 2) Has the medical establishment been sweeping aside a whole host of genuine complaints of unspecified origin that are now landing under "Long Covid"? What is becoming increasingly clear is that viruses suck worse than anybody thought, and we need to start paying attention to that.