> Now, the findings reported by the Trinity team in the top international journal Nature Neuroscience showed that there was disruption to the integrity of the blood vessels in the brains of patients suffering from Long COVID and brain fog. This blood vessel “leakiness” was able to objectively distinguish those patients with brain fog and cognitive decline compared to patients suffering from Long-COVID but not with brain fog.
> The team led by scientists at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics in Trinity’s School of Genetics and Microbiology and neurologists in the School of Medicine have also uncovered a novel form of MRI scan that shows how Long-COVID can affect the human brain’s delicate network of blood vessels.
> "For the first time, we have been able to show that leaky blood vessels in the human brain, in tandem with a hyperactive immune system may be the key drivers of brain fog associated with Long COVID. ..." — Prof. Matthew Campbell, Professor in Genetics and Head of Genetics at Trinity, and Principal Investigator at FutureNeuro.
As for healing, I'd think blood vessels could! The article doesn't say whether it's an autoimmune problem, so I suspect the researchers are being conservative or don't know?
> "The concept that many other viral infections that lead to post-viral syndromes might drive blood vessel leakage in the brain is potentially game changing and is under active investigation by the team.” — also Prof. Campbell
"We have three on-going, major follow-up initiatives. First, we are assessing, in a temporal manner, whether symptom resolution in patients who had long COVID and brain fog is accompanied by the resolution of BBB disruption. Second, we are screening novel BBB regulators to specifically target and treat the BBB disruption observed. This is exciting as we do not need to develop therapeutics to cross the BBB per se, but rather only to stabilize the structure. Last, we are expanding our clinical research into examining BBB integrity in other post-viral illnesses in tandem with functional neurological disorders (those conditions with no current observable basis for them). It is our vision that targeted regulation of the BBB will change the landscape of how neurological disorders are treated in the future."
As far as I understand, you are saying that blood vessels are the cause of long COVID, but vascular disruption predispose to long term COVID. So it's more a feature of COVID(or other disease I guess?) than a feature of long term COVID specifically.
> Vascular disruption has been implicated in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pathogenesis and may predispose to the neurological sequelae associated with long COVID, yet it is unclear how blood–brain barrier (BBB) function is affected in these conditions.
Autoimmune is one of the primary causes of leaky blood vessels [0]. The causality could still easily be what the GP (and many researchers) were intuiting.
Not just experinental medication; some first-line medications for treating autoimmune disease can also cause different autoimmune diseases as side effects (e.g., drug-induced lupus). All you're really doing is fine-tuning different dials and hoping you tune them in the right direction.
Likely not true, he literally deployed to a location known for burn pits, that is likely the cause of all his issues, since foreign bodies can enter the lungs from burning and cause immune system issues at best, and cancer (which is insanely common for burn put victums) at works.
> Was this obvious idea of scanning the brain for brain fog never tried before?
> The team led by scientists at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics in Trinity’s School of Genetics and Microbiology and neurologists in the School of Medicine have also uncovered a novel form of MRI scan
A typical clinical MRI machine has a resolution of about 2mm. Small lesions are invisible to it. They are expensive to run and, more importantly, a scan takes a long time, so you usually only do some sort of specialized detail measurements, not a detailed "full picture" of everything. MRI machines typically run non-stop to be economically viable (just the helium coolant costs something like 200k$ per year), consequently your research likely competes with other teams', I presume. The contrasting agents able to cross the blood-brain-barrier are not substances without concern. They tend to accumulate in the brain, I guess people may be extra cautious with a hypothesis of hyperimmunity, or leaky blood vessels.
I am pretty sure a standard MRI scan of the brain did not show the described clinical evidence before.
Also:
> Undertaking this complicated clinical research study at a time of national crisis and when our hospital system was under severe pressure is a testament to the skill and resource of our medical trainees and staff.
Yes, I think the research team is saying exactly that:
> "The concept that many other viral infections that lead to post-viral syndromes might drive blood vessel leakage in the brain is potentially game changing and is under active investigation by the team.” — Matthew Campbell, Professor in Genetics and Head of Genetics at Trinity, and Principal Investigator at FutureNeuro.
Long COVID shares a lot of symptoms with ME/CFS. And yes it has been researched before, but neurological illnesses are usually beyond our knowledge at this point. Additional funding/attention to Long COVID could help with both.
There is probably a hidden bias in play, in that people who suffer from CFS are overwhelmed with daily tasks and are unable to engage in advocacy in promoting research.
Very few people suffering from any serious disease are able to engage in advocacy in promoting research. I mean, debilitating fatigue itself isn't exactly an exclusive, or rare symptom.
The main issue is probably how little we know about the body in detail, really. Especially the immune system. And if your starting point is a diagnosis of "well, it's nothing else", that's a moving target, anyway. I guess, you could count a lot of basic research as CFS research.
But their loved ones can. The victims of severe diseases rarely do the advocacy themselves, they are too busy trying to get better. The ones who care for them however, and have to bear the external costs will do everything they can to get people attention.
It would be interesting to track blood pressure of people post covid for exactly this reason. Autonomic processes will attempt to correct the system when operating outside of norms.
This is a press release issued by the Trinity College, the employer of the study authors. Thus, it represents more of a claim than an independent assessment.
I suggest editing the headline to reflect this - maybe "Scientists claim to have discovered underlying cause of Long Covid linked 'brain fog'"
It's still technically just a claim until it's circulated awhile. The biggest journals like Nature are the most notorious for publishing papers that don't replicate.
Being published in Nature basically means that your paper is fine as far as review can see and that it could have a large impact. It retracts all the time.
Yes, because peer review is not very good and not very deep. Retractions almost always come after the paper sees wider circulation and more people with a skeptical eye analyze the paper. Nature itself discusses this:
Peer review evaluates only the paper. It can’t check the underlying correctness of the science, only that the paper clearly communicates what was done and observed.
Science is a process. Publishing a paper is just one step in the middle of that process. Not an endpoint.
Which is exactly what I and the OP have been saying. This is not a discovery but a claim of a discovery, and whether that claim stands up to scrutiny only time will tell.
> “For the first time, we have been able to show that leaky blood vessels in the human brain, in tandem with a hyperactive immune system may be the key drivers of brain fog associated with Long COVID. This is critically important, as understanding the underlying cause of these conditions will allow us to develop targeted therapies for patients in the future,” said Prof. Matthew Campbell, Professor in Genetics and Head of Genetics at Trinity, and Principal Investigator at FutureNeuro.
we have had lots of complications after COVID, in my family. I have been cooking a lot onion soup - onions are supposed to strengthen the immune system and are anti-inflammatory. Now the result tastes good, and I think it helped them to get over that COVID shit. (however I guess there isn't a lot of science in this diatribe...)
"We suggest that flavonoids as critical nutritional supplements, are suitable for the alleviation and shortening of the period associated with the post‐COVID‐19 syndrome."
Flavenoids are onion extracts, Quercetin is one of them.
> The team led by scientists at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics in Trinity’s School of Genetics and Microbiology and neurologists in the School of Medicine have also uncovered a novel form of MRI scan that shows how Long-COVID can affect the human brain’s delicate network of blood vessels.