Long Covid

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IvanV
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Re: Long Covid

Post by IvanV » Thu Sep 30, 2021 4:05 pm

bagpuss wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:34 pm
I'm similarly under-educated in biology but I've found that the best way to make sense of unknown biological terms is to search specifically for images rather than all pages. I've just been doing exactly that on bits of ankle so it was the first thing I did when I read your post. If you do that for both endotheliopathy and endothelial cells, you'll find a whole host of diagrams, many specifically relating to COVID-19 as well, which should at least help make sense of all the words in the Wiki article, if not actually explain the whole thing.
Thanks, good idea. So what I got, in words I can understand is:

The endothelium is a continuous membrane of cells lining the interior of the blood vessel. Endothelial cells release substances that control vascular relaxation and contraction as well as enzymes that control blood clotting, immune function and platelet (a colorless substance in the blood) adhesion. Endotheliopathy - ie malfunction of the endothelium - is frequently part of what is going on in heart diseases.

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Woodchopper
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Re: Long Covid

Post by Woodchopper » Thu Oct 07, 2021 11:22 am

Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK: 7 October 2021

An estimated 1.1 million people living in private households in the UK (1.7% of the population) were experiencing self-reported “long COVID” (symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were not explained by something else) as of 5 September 2021; this is up from 970,000 (1.5%) as of 1 August 2021, reflecting increased COVID-19 infection rates in July 2021.

The estimates presented in this analysis relate to self-reported long COVID, as experienced by study participants who responded to a representative survey, rather than clinically diagnosed ongoing symptomatic COVID-19 or post-COVID-19 syndrome in the full population.
Of people with self-reported long COVID, 831,000 (77%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, and 405,000 (37%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least one year previously.

Symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of 706,000 people (65% of those with self-reported long COVID), with 211,000 (19%) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot”.

Fatigue was the most common symptom reported as part of individuals' experience of long COVID (56% of those with self-reported long COVID), followed by shortness of breath (40%), loss of smell (32%), and difficulty concentrating (31%).

As a proportion of the UK population, prevalence of self-reported long COVID was greatest in people aged 35 to 69 years, females, people living in more deprived areas, those working in health or social care, and those with another activity-limiting health condition or disability; compared with the previous month, prevalence of self-reported long COVID was notably higher among young adults aged 17 to 24 years and people working in the hospitality sector.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... ctober2021

raven
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Re: Long Covid

Post by raven » Sat Oct 09, 2021 9:10 pm

Cheers for that, woodchopper.

405k reporting symptoms over a year later, and 211k reporting symptoms that limited day-to-day activities. That's a big burden of morbidity.

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Re: Long Covid

Post by AnnaMia » Wed Oct 13, 2021 7:26 pm

It was so horrifying the very first days!
Now it is so much better, people are not in any fear.

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Woodchopper
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Re: Long Covid

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Oct 24, 2021 5:21 pm


The SARS-CoV-2 main protease Mpro causes microvascular brain pathology by cleaving NEMO in brain endothelial cells

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can damage cerebral small vessels and cause neurological symptoms. Here we describe structural changes in cerebral small vessels of patients with COVID-19 and elucidate potential mechanisms underlying the vascular pathology. In brains of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-infected individuals and animal models, we found an increased number of empty basement membrane tubes, so-called string vessels representing remnants of lost capillaries. We obtained evidence that brain endothelial cells are infected and that the main protease of SARS-CoV-2 (Mpro) cleaves NEMO, the essential modulator of nuclear factor-κB. By ablating NEMO, Mpro induces the death of human brain endothelial cells and the occurrence of string vessels in mice. Deletion of receptor-interacting protein kinase (RIPK) 3, a mediator of regulated cell death, blocks the vessel rarefaction and disruption of the blood–brain barrier due to NEMO ablation. Importantly, a pharmacological inhibitor of RIPK signaling prevented the Mpro-induced microvascular pathology. Our data suggest RIPK as a potential therapeutic target to treat the neuropathology of COVID-19.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-021-00926-1

tl;dr long term neurological damage in some Covid patients

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Woodchopper
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Re: Long Covid

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Dec 05, 2021 9:09 am


Importance After an infection by SARS-CoV-2, many patients present with persistent physical symptoms that may impair their quality of life. Beliefs regarding the causes of these symptoms may influence their perception and promote maladaptive health behaviors.

Objective To examine the associations of self-reported COVID-19 infection and SARS-CoV-2 serology test results with persistent physical symptoms (eg, fatigue, breathlessness, or impaired attention) in the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design, Setting, and Participants Participants in this cross-sectional analysis were 26 823 individuals from the French population-based CONSTANCES cohort, included between 2012 and 2019, who took part in the nested SAPRIS and SAPRIS-SERO surveys. Between May and November 2020, an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to detect anti–SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Between December 2020 and January 2021, the participants reported whether they believed they had experienced COVID-19 infection and had physical symptoms during the previous 4 weeks that had persisted for at least 8 weeks. Participants who reported having an initial COVID-19 infection only after completing the serology test were excluded.

Main Outcomes and Measures Logistic regressions for each persistent symptom as the outcome were computed in models including both self-reported COVID-19 infection and serology test results and adjusting for age, sex, income, and educational level.

Results Of 35 852 volunteers invited to participate in the study, 26 823 (74.8%) with complete data were included in the present study (mean [SD] age, 49.4 [12.9] years; 13 731 women [51.2%]). Self-reported infection was positively associated with persistent physical symptoms, with odds ratios ranging from 1.39 (95% CI, 1.03-1.86) to 16.37 (95% CI, 10.21-26.24) except for hearing impairment (odds ratio, 1.45; 95% CI, 0.82-2.55) and sleep problems (odds ratio, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.89-1.46). A serology test result positive for SARS-COV-2 was positively associated only with persistent anosmia (odds ratio, 2.72; 95% CI, 1.66-4.46), even when restricting the analyses to participants who attributed their symptoms to COVID-19 infection. Further adjusting for self-rated health or depressive symptoms yielded similar results. There was no significant interaction between belief and serology test results.

Conclusions and Relevance The findings of this cross-sectional analysis of a large, population-based French cohort suggest that persistent physical symptoms after COVID-19 infection may be associated more with the belief in having been infected with SARS-CoV-2 than with having laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection. Further research in this area should consider underlying mechanisms that may not be specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A medical evaluation of these patients may be needed to prevent symptoms due to another disease being erroneously attributed to “long COVID.”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamain ... le/2785832

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Re: Long Covid

Post by raven » Sun Dec 05, 2021 9:17 pm

A medical evaluation of these patients may be needed to prevent symptoms due to another disease being erroneously attributed to “long COVID.”
And vice versa perhaps. (Friend of my sister was told, it's asthma, it's the menopause... oh, wait, no you're right, it's probably long covid. N=1 and all that, but not getting the right diagnosis straight away is not uncommon & symptoms like fatigue have lots of causes.)

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Re: Long Covid

Post by sTeamTraen » Sat Dec 11, 2021 5:38 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Dec 05, 2021 9:09 am
Conclusions and Relevance The findings of this cross-sectional analysis of a large, population-based French cohort suggest that persistent physical symptoms after COVID-19 infection may be associated more with the belief in having been infected with SARS-CoV-2 than with having laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection. Further research in this area should consider underlying mechanisms that may not be specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A medical evaluation of these patients may be needed to prevent symptoms due to another disease being erroneously attributed to “long COVID.”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamain ... le/2785832
This is a very poor paper (see PubPeer) and I am talking to people from a French association of Long Covid patients who are looking for impactful ways to debunk it. The first, rather large, problem is that over half of the blood test positive results are false positives, thus greatly inflating the people who "tested positive" but don't have Long Covid symptoms. The association's principal concern is that this article will be used to play down Long Covid ("it's all in your head"), and/or to prioritise treatment treatment for psychological/psychiatric symptoms over physiological ones (cf ME/CFS patients and the PACE trial). Interestingly, the senior author is a psychiatrist.
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Re: Long Covid

Post by sTeamTraen » Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:58 am

JAMA Internal Medicine has accepted my comment on the article, which is visible on its web page: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamain ... le/2785832

I have also written a not-for-publication letter to the editor pointing out that the article and supplement contain a variety of elementary numerical errors that, as a minimum, require a correction to be issued.
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nezumi
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Re: Long Covid

Post by nezumi » Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:02 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:58 am
JAMA Internal Medicine has accepted my comment on the article, which is visible on its web page: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamain ... le/2785832

I have also written a not-for-publication letter to the editor pointing out that the article and supplement contain a variety of elementary numerical errors that, as a minimum, require a correction to be issued.
All very fair points. I find the way they ascribe physical symptoms as psychological beliefs to be both erroneous and insulting. It seems a lot like they already decided that long covid is psychosomatic and set out to find a way to prove it. Even a simple scan read without even touching the numbers (as I can't... yet) is revealing. There are several choices of words that are very minimising and several statements that imply the researchers simply don't believe patient reports, which I suppose is fair enough - I'd want real evidence from serology myself, however, as you (I think) pointed out, the serology test used isn't really accurate enough to give reliable figures. I'm not sure patient reports of whether or not they think they've had covid are reliable either and combining both (as they've done here) inaccurate serology and biased patient reports is going to end up wronger, not righter.

Another comment on that site mentioned seroconversion and a hypothesis that long covid might be associated with less seroconversion, which renders the serology even less useful!

I'd love to know what exactly is wrong with the numbers (so I can spot the same kind of issues later down the line).

I was going to ask how this study could be done better, but having reviewed the initial question I'm not sure it's worth doing at all. It seems to me like an excuse to paint anyone who suffers from a post-viral fatigue as a malingerer who should just get therapy (except for a select few the serology picked up who get to be Valid. If I were really being cynical, I'd expect the next stage of research to be "how do we make money out of psych treatments for post-viral patients (at the expense of somebody else actually treating it so it gets better but we make no money)". I'm not, I expect the authors thought the study would be useful and helpful. Shame they were misguided (IMHO!).
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Re: Long Covid

Post by discovolante » Wed Dec 22, 2021 5:44 pm

nezumi wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:02 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:58 am
JAMA Internal Medicine has accepted my comment on the article, which is visible on its web page: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamain ... le/2785832

I have also written a not-for-publication letter to the editor pointing out that the article and supplement contain a variety of elementary numerical errors that, as a minimum, require a correction to be issued.
All very fair points. I find the way they ascribe physical symptoms as psychological beliefs to be both erroneous and insulting. It seems a lot like they already decided that long covid is psychosomatic and set out to find a way to prove it. Even a simple scan read without even touching the numbers (as I can't... yet) is revealing. There are several choices of words that are very minimising and several statements that imply the researchers simply don't believe patient reports, which I suppose is fair enough - I'd want real evidence from serology myself, however, as you (I think) pointed out, the serology test used isn't really accurate enough to give reliable figures. I'm not sure patient reports of whether or not they think they've had covid are reliable either and combining both (as they've done here) inaccurate serology and biased patient reports is going to end up wronger, not righter.

Another comment on that site mentioned seroconversion and a hypothesis that long covid might be associated with less seroconversion, which renders the serology even less useful!

I'd love to know what exactly is wrong with the numbers (so I can spot the same kind of issues later down the line).

I was going to ask how this study could be done better, but having reviewed the initial question I'm not sure it's worth doing at all. It seems to me like an excuse to paint anyone who suffers from a post-viral fatigue as a malingerer who should just get therapy (except for a select few the serology picked up who get to be Valid. If I were really being cynical, I'd expect the next stage of research to be "how do we make money out of psych treatments for post-viral patients (at the expense of somebody else actually treating it so it gets better but we make no money)". I'm not, I expect the authors thought the study would be useful and helpful. Shame they were misguided (IMHO!).
This isn't really directly connected with the study, so may split the thread if it develops, but I'd be interested in what you think about psychosomaticism as a concept. I'm not being particularly (at all) scientific here but even though the definition of psychosomatic seems to include symptoms 'increased' or 'aggravated' by the mind, it still seems to be rooted in a mind/body dualism that I just find increasingly hard to accept the more I come across functional disorders, symptoms, and so on, particularly in people who have experienced trauma. It's something I come across in my daily working life from time to time (in a completely non-clinical context, but I work with a cross section of the public that often has long term health problems etc, and stuff like 'psychosomatic' illness just isn't that rare), and also SvL had been involved in a few bits of research related to it. So it's on my mind a fair bit but my understanding is pretty limited. Obviously I'm aware that it's an extremely contentious topic for reasons this forum is pretty familiar with, but I'm trying to put that to one side for now...
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Re: Long Covid

Post by shpalman » Wed Dec 22, 2021 5:55 pm

discovolante wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 5:44 pm
nezumi wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:02 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:58 am
JAMA Internal Medicine has accepted my comment on the article, which is visible on its web page: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamain ... le/2785832

I have also written a not-for-publication letter to the editor pointing out that the article and supplement contain a variety of elementary numerical errors that, as a minimum, require a correction to be issued.
All very fair points. I find the way they ascribe physical symptoms as psychological beliefs to be both erroneous and insulting. It seems a lot like they already decided that long covid is psychosomatic and set out to find a way to prove it. Even a simple scan read without even touching the numbers (as I can't... yet) is revealing. There are several choices of words that are very minimising and several statements that imply the researchers simply don't believe patient reports, which I suppose is fair enough - I'd want real evidence from serology myself, however, as you (I think) pointed out, the serology test used isn't really accurate enough to give reliable figures. I'm not sure patient reports of whether or not they think they've had covid are reliable either and combining both (as they've done here) inaccurate serology and biased patient reports is going to end up wronger, not righter.

Another comment on that site mentioned seroconversion and a hypothesis that long covid might be associated with less seroconversion, which renders the serology even less useful!

I'd love to know what exactly is wrong with the numbers (so I can spot the same kind of issues later down the line).

I was going to ask how this study could be done better, but having reviewed the initial question I'm not sure it's worth doing at all. It seems to me like an excuse to paint anyone who suffers from a post-viral fatigue as a malingerer who should just get therapy (except for a select few the serology picked up who get to be Valid. If I were really being cynical, I'd expect the next stage of research to be "how do we make money out of psych treatments for post-viral patients (at the expense of somebody else actually treating it so it gets better but we make no money)". I'm not, I expect the authors thought the study would be useful and helpful. Shame they were misguided (IMHO!).
This isn't really directly connected with the study, so may split the thread if it develops, but I'd be interested in what you think about psychosomaticism as a concept. I'm not being particularly (at all) scientific here but even though the definition of psychosomatic seems to include symptoms 'increased' or 'aggravated' by the mind, it still seems to be rooted in a mind/body dualism that I just find increasingly hard to accept the more I come across functional disorders, symptoms, and so on, particularly in people who have experienced trauma. It's something I come across in my daily working life from time to time (in a completely non-clinical context, but I work with a cross section of the public that often has long term health problems etc, and stuff like 'psychosomatic' illness just isn't that rare), and also SvL had been involved in a few bits of research related to it. So it's on my mind a fair bit but my understanding is pretty limited. Obviously I'm aware that it's an extremely contentious topic for reasons this forum is pretty familiar with, but I'm trying to put that to one side for now...
Has anyone else here read The Sickening Mind: Brain, Behaviour, Immunity and Disease by Paul Martin?
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discovolante
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Re: Long Covid

Post by discovolante » Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:12 pm

shpalman wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 5:55 pm
discovolante wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 5:44 pm
nezumi wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:02 pm


All very fair points. I find the way they ascribe physical symptoms as psychological beliefs to be both erroneous and insulting. It seems a lot like they already decided that long covid is psychosomatic and set out to find a way to prove it. Even a simple scan read without even touching the numbers (as I can't... yet) is revealing. There are several choices of words that are very minimising and several statements that imply the researchers simply don't believe patient reports, which I suppose is fair enough - I'd want real evidence from serology myself, however, as you (I think) pointed out, the serology test used isn't really accurate enough to give reliable figures. I'm not sure patient reports of whether or not they think they've had covid are reliable either and combining both (as they've done here) inaccurate serology and biased patient reports is going to end up wronger, not righter.

Another comment on that site mentioned seroconversion and a hypothesis that long covid might be associated with less seroconversion, which renders the serology even less useful!

I'd love to know what exactly is wrong with the numbers (so I can spot the same kind of issues later down the line).

I was going to ask how this study could be done better, but having reviewed the initial question I'm not sure it's worth doing at all. It seems to me like an excuse to paint anyone who suffers from a post-viral fatigue as a malingerer who should just get therapy (except for a select few the serology picked up who get to be Valid. If I were really being cynical, I'd expect the next stage of research to be "how do we make money out of psych treatments for post-viral patients (at the expense of somebody else actually treating it so it gets better but we make no money)". I'm not, I expect the authors thought the study would be useful and helpful. Shame they were misguided (IMHO!).
This isn't really directly connected with the study, so may split the thread if it develops, but I'd be interested in what you think about psychosomaticism as a concept. I'm not being particularly (at all) scientific here but even though the definition of psychosomatic seems to include symptoms 'increased' or 'aggravated' by the mind, it still seems to be rooted in a mind/body dualism that I just find increasingly hard to accept the more I come across functional disorders, symptoms, and so on, particularly in people who have experienced trauma. It's something I come across in my daily working life from time to time (in a completely non-clinical context, but I work with a cross section of the public that often has long term health problems etc, and stuff like 'psychosomatic' illness just isn't that rare), and also SvL had been involved in a few bits of research related to it. So it's on my mind a fair bit but my understanding is pretty limited. Obviously I'm aware that it's an extremely contentious topic for reasons this forum is pretty familiar with, but I'm trying to put that to one side for now...
Has anyone else here read The Sickening Mind: Brain, Behaviour, Immunity and Disease by Paul Martin?
No, is this a recommendation?
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Re: Long Covid

Post by shpalman » Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:24 pm

I was going to recommend it as long as nobody comes in and says it's a terrible misrepresentation of everything which serious researchers in the field are actually working on.

I like his other book, about sleep, too.
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Re: Long Covid

Post by nezumi » Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:28 pm

discovolante wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 5:44 pm
All of the snips.
This book is a fantastic read if you're interested.

I have a few thoughts, I am not saying psychosomatic illness always has a physical/neurological basis (the imaging equipment isn't granular enough yet to prove that either way*) but that it may very well often have but we just don't know because we haven't got there yet. I have no use for the mind-body duality, the way I see it all brain activity is a physical process therefore the mind is a product of physical processes. Complicated and obscure ones, but physical. To me it seems like the duality of mind and body comes from that old religious idea that the mind survives the brain, and that's just wishful bl..dy thinking.

Even if they did have evidence that positive serology ONLY (and they don't because it's inaccurate) was absolute proof of whether or not an individual had Covid which prompted the long covid symptoms, they still can't say anything meaningful because they can't rule out other viruses that cause similar symptoms or even another organic brain disorder. Not only do we not know where to look, we don't even know HOW to look!

I am still not even convinced that "beliefs about illness" actually do have an impact on length/severity of that illness, did I miss the block-busting study where optimists always get better faster? This is obviously not my area and I am not an expert so I am actually asking; has somebody proved that positive thinking helps with anything?

* Although I do definitely lean towards the majority having an organic basis. If these things were based on beliefs alone, anti-psychotic meds wouldn't work on delusional disorders better than placebo, would they?

RE shpalmans's book recommendation: I haven't read it but I'm sure I'll loudly have an opinion once I do :D
Non fui. Fui. Non sum. Non curo.

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Re: Long Covid

Post by discovolante » Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:43 pm

nezumi wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:28 pm
discovolante wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 5:44 pm
All of the snips.
This book is a fantastic read if you're interested.

I have a few thoughts, I am not saying psychosomatic illness always has a physical/neurological basis (the imaging equipment isn't granular enough yet to prove that either way*) but that it may very well often have but we just don't know because we haven't got there yet. I have no use for the mind-body duality, the way I see it all brain activity is a physical process therefore the mind is a product of physical processes. Complicated and obscure ones, but physical. To me it seems like the duality of mind and body comes from that old religious idea that the mind survives the brain, and that's just wishful bl..dy thinking.

Even if they did have evidence that positive serology ONLY (and they don't because it's inaccurate) was absolute proof of whether or not an individual had Covid which prompted the long covid symptoms, they still can't say anything meaningful because they can't rule out other viruses that cause similar symptoms or even another organic brain disorder. Not only do we not know where to look, we don't even know HOW to look!

I am still not even convinced that "beliefs about illness" actually do have an impact on length/severity of that illness, did I miss the block-busting study where optimists always get better faster? This is obviously not my area and I am not an expert so I am actually asking; has somebody proved that positive thinking helps with anything?

* Although I do definitely lean towards the majority having an organic basis. If these things were based on beliefs alone, anti-psychotic meds wouldn't work on delusional disorders better than placebo, would they?

RE shpalmans's book recommendation: I haven't read it but I'm sure I'll loudly have an opinion once I do :D
I think we are pretty much on the same page :) I assume/know there are huge gaps in my knowledge because well, I'm not a clinician or a researcher by any stretch of the imagination, but based on the little I do know and some of the research I'm aware of I feel fairly sure there is *something* we haven't found yet. Again as you say not that it would be the answer to all mysteries, but something beyond 'just because it's in your head doesn't mean it's not real' because even that assumes there is a clear distinction between the physical/biological and mental/psychological. In particular (and I really am digressing now) I feel frustrated that the stigma that seems to have been created through that dichotomy does trauma survivors absolutely no favours whatsoever, and whilst I'm sure there are a lot of people doing really important work (so this isn't about them, more about what gets prioritised and measured from the outside) it seems to me as a lay observer that the difficulties with treating people with PTSD etc go well beyond general crap mental health funding. Anyway. I am tempted to ask for any info where this kind of thing is being properly researched and tested, but unless it proved me wrong I'd probably just end up even more frustrated :P
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Re: Long Covid

Post by raven » Thu Dec 23, 2021 11:46 pm

nezumi wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:28 pm
I am not saying psychosomatic illness always has a physical/neurological basis (the imaging equipment isn't granular enough yet to prove that either way*) but that it may very well often have but we just don't know because we haven't got there yet.
Whenever this topic comes up, I just think of stomach ulcers & helicobacter. For ages that was type A personality, stress, bad diet, etc,etc. Now, we know it's sometimes a weird bacteria burying itself in your stomach lining.

There's lots of medical things we just don't know yet, but sometimes I think doctors have a hard time admitting that.

(I'm not saying the mind can't affect the body, because it absolutely can: that's how placebo/nocebo works after all. But if you can't identify a physical cause for an illness, it's not always the mind.)

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Re: Long Covid

Post by Sciolus » Fri Dec 24, 2021 9:24 am

We also know that viral infections can persist and have life-long effects even after the original infection appears to have been completely eradicated. I'm thinking about shingles and other herpes viruses.

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Re: Long Covid

Post by jimbob » Sat Dec 25, 2021 4:57 pm

From a group chat. A haematologist's comments.

Other explanation in long covid the biomarkers of vascular inflammation are sky high and I personally saw lot of blood clots in patients 1-2 months post covid

I used to think long covid was bulshit
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Long Covid

Post by sTeamTraen » Sat Dec 25, 2021 9:45 pm

nezumi wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:02 pm
I'd love to know what exactly is wrong with the numbers (so I can spot the same kind of issues later down the line).
OK, here's a couple of examples. You can't go back now.

First, in this table, it is impossible for 463 people with "Other symptoms" and 463 people with "Sensory symptoms" to represent a different percentage of the sample. The numerator and denominator are identical. That got me checking the other numbers, and if you look with a calculator you'll see that over half of the percentages, rounded to 1dp, are not correct.

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Second, the number of people who "Believed" that they had had Covid is described as 914 twice, and as (461 + 453) = 914 a third time. Yet in eTable 5, which reports how those "914" people replied to the follow-up question "Has this [belief] been confirmed?", you can immediately see (e.g., first pair of numbers, in blue) that the denominator of the percentage of which 165 is the numerator must be over 1,000. Adding up all the Ns gives a total of 1,001. So how can 1,001 people have been asked "Has your belief that you had Covid been confirmed?" (the title of eTable 5 is fairly unambiguous) when only 914 stated that Yes, they believed that they had had Covid in the first place? (Note: the eTables are from the supplemental information, which is linked from the article's web page. It's quite common to have secondary, supporting tables and figures like this, if the journal wants to keep the word/page count of the main article down, either to save paper in the printed journal—those still exist!—or to keep it "snappy" for today's busy researcher who apparently prefers gee-whizz to rigour.

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Something something hammer something something nail

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Woodchopper
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Re: Long Covid

Post by Woodchopper » Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:11 pm

Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK : 6 January 2022

An estimated 1.3 million people living in private households in the UK (2.0% of the population) were experiencing self-reported long COVID (symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were not explained by something else) as of 6 December 2021.

The estimates presented in this analysis relate to self-reported long COVID, as experienced by study participants who responded to a representative survey, rather than clinically diagnosed ongoing symptomatic COVID-19 or post-COVID-19 syndrome in the full population.

Of people with self-reported long COVID, 270,000 (21%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 less than 12 weeks previously; 892,000 people (70%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, and 506,000 (40%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least one year previously.

The proportion of people with self-reported long COVID who reported that it reduced their ability to carry out daily activities remained stable compared with previous months; symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of 809,000 people (64% of those with self-reported long COVID), with 247,000 (20%) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot”.

Fatigue continued to be the most common symptom reported as part of individuals' experience of long COVID (51% of those with self-reported long COVID), followed by loss of smell (37%), shortness of breath (36%), and difficulty concentrating (28%).

As a proportion of the UK population, prevalence of self-reported long COVID was greatest in people aged 35 to 69 years, females, people living in more deprived areas, those working in health care, social care, or teaching and education (which saw the biggest month-on-month increase out of all employment sectors), and those with another activity-limiting health condition or disability.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... anuary2022

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jimbob
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Re: Long Covid

Post by jimbob » Thu Jan 06, 2022 6:32 pm

Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

Herainestold
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Re: Long Covid

Post by Herainestold » Thu Jan 06, 2022 7:17 pm

Wow. Scary stuff. If Omichron or some newer variant infects everybody in the next few weeks and 50% of people suffer some kind of long term damage, we are in big, big trouble.
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Re: Long Covid

Post by Millennie Al » Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:53 am

Herainestold wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 7:17 pm
Wow. Scary stuff. If Omichron or some newer variant infects everybody in the next few weeks and 50% of people suffer some kind of long term damage, we are in big, big trouble.
Not as bad as you claim. It says 50% of those who had symptoms - not 50% of people infected.

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Re: Long Covid

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Jan 07, 2022 9:32 am

Probably an idea to be a bit more cautious than the author of the threads. Several papers have been posted on this thread which compare people who had Covid with a control group which didn't (in addition to the one which SteamTraen usefully pointed out is dodgy). In those cases many of the symptoms, especially fatigue, are also reported by the control group. Though symptoms specific to Covid like loss of sense of taste or smell aren't.

This isn't to say that people are inventing their symptoms, but that they may have a different cause than Long Covid. The obvious one being that living through the pandemic has had a negative effect upon all of us.

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