Thumbnail Photo by Yeyo Salas on Unsplash
Hi 👋,
Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend. For those who celebrate Halloween 🎃, I hope you have an eventful & safe day tomorrow.
I want to announce that starting next week, the newsletter will be published on Mondays as opposed to Sundays. This is from feedback I received last week that many people are not checking their emails on the weekend. We will give a test period & see if it works well.
Without further ado, let’s jump into the newsletter for this week! 🔬
🔍 Research
From the paper:
These results, which, to our knowledge, provide the first characterization of the plasma metabolome in individuals with PASC, indicate several major metabolic derangements.
The higher levels of plasma carnitine-conjugated and free fatty acids, especially poly- and highly unsaturated, as well as hydroxylated, fatty acids in PASC are consistent with the lower fatty acid oxidation capacity of mitochondria. This metabolomic signature was reported in acute COVID-19, where disease severity was associated with both dyslipidemia and markers of mitochondrial dysfunction.
We also identified that PASC plasma was characterized by a significant depletion of multiple amino acids, including those (alanine, aspartate, asparagine, and serine) that are involved in transamination reactions. The depletion of methionine may reflect higher levels of oxidant stress-induced isoaspartyl-damage repair, as reported in red blood cells of COVID-19 patients [10], or alternative methionine use, for example to fuel long-term epigenetic regulation (e.g., DNA methylation at CpG island; methyl-6-adenosine RNA modification, histone methylation).
Long-COVID post-viral chronic fatigue and affective symptoms are associated with oxidative damage, lowered antioxidant defenses and inflammation: a proof of concept and mechanism study
From the paper:
The current study’s first major finding is that (a) Long COVID is associated with decreased ANTIOX(antioxidant defenses), including Gpx(glutathione peroxidase), and a mild inflammatory process; and (b) 31.7% of Long COVID patients belong to a cluster characterized by decreased SpO2, antioxidant levels, zinc, and Gpx, and increased body temperature, CRP, and OSTOX (increased oxidative toxicity)(increased MPO, NOx, MDA, and (PCs)). To put it another way, Long COVID is associated with immune-inflammatory processes and decreased ANTIOX, while a subgroup of Long COVID patients additionally exhibits increased NO production, oxidative damage to proteins (PCs) and lipids with increased aldehyde formation (MDA), and an immune-oxidative stress response (increased MPO and CRP).
My Take: One of the difficulties with Long Covid is that many standard blood tests show nothing is wrong. Both of these papers show something is wrong, but it may take a further deep dive to find the issues.
📰 Media
Really good read! Neeja details her experience within her Long Covid clinic.
Empowering People With Disabilities Through Remote Work
From the article:
The number of employees with disabilities participating in the workforce reached the highest rate in more than a decade this year, a new study found.
Yet too few leaders realize that, according to the US government, people with disabilities are the largest minority group in this country, with 50 million - 15% of the population - living with disabilities.
The benefits of remote work for people with disabilities bears particular relevance due to the impact of long Covid. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 19% of those who had Covid developed long Covid. Recent Census Bureau data indicates that 16 million working age Americans suffer from it, with economic costs reaching $3.7 trillion according to a recent estimate.
Long COVID: how lost connections between nerve cells in the brain may explain cognitive symptoms
From the article:
Scientists are working to understand how exactly a COVID infection affects the human brain. But this is difficult to study, because we can’t experiment on living people’s brains. One way around this is to create organoids, which are miniature organs grown from stem cells.
In these organoids, we found that an excessive number of synapses (the connections between brain cells) were eliminated – more than you would expect to see in a normal brain.
🩺 Treatments
Pfizer’s Paxlovid to Be Studied as Potential Long Covid Therapy
From the article:
Pfizer Inc.’s antiviral Paxlovid will be tested in a late-stage trial as a treatment for long Covid.
The yearlong study is slated to start in January and involve 1,700 participants, according to information posted on a US government website on Thursday. It will investigate whether 15 days of treatment twice daily improves symptoms and function, including exercise tolerance, three months later.
My Take: Took long enough! People have been waiting since Paxlovid was initially announced for something like this to happen.
Autoimmune gene expression profiling of fingerstick whole blood in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
From the Paper[Abstract, only]:
From the AIP testing, ME/CFS patients with severe, bedridden conditions displayed significant increases in gene expression of IKZF2, IKZF3, HSPA8, BACH2, ABCE1 and CD3D, as compared to patients with mild to moderate disease conditions. These six aforementioned genes were further upregulated in the 22 bedridden participants who suffer not only from ME/CFS but also from other autoimmune diseases. These genes are involved in T cell, B cell and autoimmunity functions.
My Take: This is huge news because the investigators are from Bristol Myers Squibb, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Is big pharma finally starting to take an interest in ME/CFS + Long Covid?