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Hi everyone!
Kind of a slow news week but to be expected within the last couple of weeks of summer. It seems like a lot of Long Covid research is really starting to pick up.
The biggest piece of news to come out this week was that 2-4 million people are out of work in the US due to Long Covid. This is a crazy high number, wonder what it looks like worldwide?
Research
TL;DR: Interesting Twitter thread on EDS & post-viral syndromes.
Using an untargeted metabolomics approach to analyze serum metabolites in COVID-19 patients with nucleic acid turning negative
TL;DR: “Out of the 714 metabolites identified, 203 still significantly differed between COVID-19 patients and healthy controls, including multiple amino acids, fatty acids, and glycerophospholipids. The clinical indexes including monocytes, lymphocytes, albumin concentration, total bilirubin and direct bilirubin have also differed between our two groups of participators.”
“their metabolism was still dysregulated in amino acid metabolism and lipid metabolism, which could be the mechanism of long-COVID and calls for specific post-treatment care to help COVID-19 patients recover.”
Effects of Pre-Existing Mental Conditions on Fatigue and Psychological Symptoms Post-COVID-19
TL;DR:
“The present study examines the influence of these pre-existing conditions and their pre-treatment on the severity of post-COVID-19 symptoms.“
“Conclusion: Fatigue and psychological conditions of post-COVID-19 patients are not associated with pre-existing conditions.”
Exposure to phenytoin associates with a lower risk of post-COVID cognitive deficits: a cohort study
Useful Definition: “Receptor-interacting protein kinase 1 (RIPK1), a regulator of inflammation and cell death, is a potential therapeutic target in immune-mediated inflammatory disease“ (source)
TL;DR:
“This study tested the hypothesis, inspired by recent experimental research, that post-COVID cognitive deficits can be prevented by inhibiting receptor-interacting protein kinase.”
“Patients taking phenytoin at the time of COVID-19 were at a significantly lower risk of cognitive deficits in the 6 months after COVID-19 infection than a matched cohort of patients receiving levetiracetam (hazard ratio 0.78, 95% confidence interval 0.63–0.97, P = 0.024) or valproate”
Short-term and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on economic vulnerability: a population-based longitudinal study (COVIDENCE UK)
TL;DR:”Incident COVID-19 was independently associated with increased odds of participants reporting household income as being inadequate to meet their basic needs in the short term (adjusted OR (aOR) 1.39, 95% CI 1.12 to 1.73) though this did not persist in the long term”
“Exploratory analysis revealed a stronger short-term association among those who reported long COVID, defined as the presence of symptoms lasting more than 4 weeks after disease onset, than those reporting COVID-19 without long COVID.”
Potential Mechanisms for Lung Fibrosis Associated with COVID-19 Infection
TL;DR:
“Post-viral lung fibrosis due to SARS-CoV-2 has been shown to be progressive on selected patients using imaging studies.”
“However, an ongoing low-grade systemic inflammation in long COVID-19 symptoms suggests that certain non-pulmonary regulators such as epigenetic changes in hematopoietic stem cells might be critical to the chronic inflammatory response.“
Media
Long Covid keeping 2-4 million Americans out of workforce, report says
TL;DR:
“About 16 million working-age Americans have long-term Covid and 2-4 million are out of work because of its ill effects, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution.”
“Brookings estimates that there are currently 10.6m unfilled jobs. The report estimates the dollar amount of the lost wages is between $170bn and $230bn a year.”
Blood-clotting imbalance persists in Long COVID, research finds
TL;DR: “To gain a new understanding of what causes Long COVID, researchers at RCSI studied patients in Ireland with symptoms of Long COVID, and saw that the body's blood-clotting and immune systems can remain tipped out of balance long after the initial infection.”
“The study found that the blood of patients with Long COVID syndrome had higher levels of a blood-clotting booster called von Willebrand Factor (VWF), and lower levels of a protein that normally breaks down VWF, called ADAMTS13. Their analysis also suggests that blood vessels were still being damaged long after the initial infection, and that specific cells of the immune system were at abnormal levels in patients with Long COVID.”
The link for the “Hope” article about the clinical trial leads to a different article. Can you check the link and maybe re-post with the link to the correct article? Thanks!