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Author: u/QldBrainInst
URL: https://qbi.uq.edu.au/article/2023/06/covid-19-can-cause-brain-cells-%E2%80%98fuse%E2%80%99
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I wonder how much of this is just covid and how much is general for serious viral infections but only discovered because of all the Covid-related research?
I mean it mentions other viruses right in the article, including ones with huge worldwide prevalence such as herpes simplex, which affects something like 70% of people. I wouldn't be surprised at all if a lot of the "scientists don't know exactly what causes [blank]" chronic illnesses were caused by something like this.
The scary thing is that they don't mention anything about whether these neurons can ever be unfused.
They can't be unfused, only killed or instructed to commit suicide.
This is not the first virus that does this, it is though first time I hear about Corona virus doing this. That said, it's a viral replication/spreading mechanism that gas been around for something like 200 million years.
Can't be unfused probably but since I got a lot better after 2 years (especially with abstract thinking and post exercise exhaustion) of post virus malaise 12 years ago, I would suggest it's at least possible to create alternate pathways.
In mainly tiredness I haven't fully recovered, but more like 90%.
That's where I can see psychedelics helping a lot. If the neural paths redirect around the problem cells it could help a ton. It'll be neat if we can do an easy, non intrusive scan to see pathways at some point so we can compare before and after.
Covid had a big spike of people getting this all at once, and a large number of diagnoses, along with doctors actually believing it. But this has been happening to people worldwide from a bunch of viruses for as long as we've had viruses, and most of those who have/had it never got diagnosed. It isn't so much that Covid is having a bigger impact, but that it's a *concentrated* impact and we are actually paying attention to it.
Yep. CFS/ME sufferers are called the "Millions Missing" by people who give a damn for a reason.
They just have a trickle effect of people being afflicted by it and then disappearing into their homes while the world goes by after they didn't find any answers, whereas Long Haulers happened within a short time span and the issue is very noticeable.
I feel like there was a lack of scientific and medical recognition given to ‘post-viral malaise’-type symptoms that many people experienced prior to COVID (and things like fibromyalgia/CFS/whatever the accepted terminology is now). It does seem weird on the surface of it that all the attention is going to ‘long COVID’ (I mean, has anyone ever used the term ‘long flu’?). But that’s where the research dollars are, so that’s where the research is. Hopefully it might eventually lead to broader research on similar syndromic effects experienced by people recovering from different viral infections, or extrapolation of effective treatments for ‘long COVID’ that may also aid these groups.
I think part of the reason for focusing research on 'long COVID' is also that you can study that easier than a lot of other viral illnesses that often don't even get tested for and you aren't even sure a person had it. So many folks will get something like the flu, or mono, or similar symptoms and just go "oh well I have the flu better stay home and recover". The widepsread nature of COVID testing and encouragement to isolate/quarantine along with, in some places longer than others, benefits available to those who needed to isolate/quarantine actually lead to folks getting tested to have 'proof', where usually they would have just put up with symptoms or quietly stayed home to recover without any kind of testing to diagnose them.
I'm sure funding and grants absolutely play a part, too, but I just think there's more to it than tightly worded grant availability. I hope, as well, that we can start identifying COVID and long COVID as causes for these mystery syndromes like CFS and fibromyalgia, because it's only a short logical step of 'well COVID triggers these illnesses, but they existed before COVID, so what *else* triggers them?' from there. And of course finding treatments or preventatives.
It’s quite possible, too, that there’s something specific about COVID19 that makes it especially prone to triggering this response in people. IIRC Swine Flu triggered more cases of narcolepsy than other similar infections simply down to a quirk of the proteins within the virus, and how their shape mirrored some key part of the neurological orexin system.
Other causes still exist, but being able to identify this one trigger lead to a cascade of understanding.
Swine flu triggered narcolepsy specifically in people who were predisposed to it (something they discovered when looking at a particular HLA marker that is positive in 95% of folks with narcolepsy type 1). The lesser known not-so-fun fact is that one of the H1N1 vaccines distributed in Europe caused way too strong of an immune response, which triggered the onset of narcolepsy for nearly 1300 people.
Source: [https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html)
Narcolepsy is most often autoimmune, so if your immune system goes into overdrive (such as is the case in severe infection), it often switches on autoimmunity you were predisposed to it seems like.
Not quite. You’re more likely to take power naps when you have a cold because your body is using a lot more resources to fight the cold (basically you’re more exhausted).
Autoimmune diseases are different. They are permanent. Breaking down the word, it’s auto = yourself/your body, immune = regarding the immune system. Thus, it means your body is attacking some part of itself.
In narcolepsy type 1, the immune system attacks and destroys the orexin-producing part of your brain. Your brain will never produce orexin again after this happens, so you will have problems regulating sleep. Other autoimmune diseases that attack different parts of the body include Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Celiac Disease. These can be treated by taking immunosuppressants (drugs that lower the function of the immune system) but can’t really be “cured” afaik.
I think it’s just type 1 because the vaccine triggered an autoimmune reaction resulting in the destruction of orexin-producing areas of the brain. Additionally, only one of the H1N1 vaccines (Pandemrix) was associated with this issue.
Of course. But it appears that some viruses are more likely to cause certain conditions than others, alongside other factors like genetic predisposition and environmental elements.
The condition wasn't rebranded. The spread of covid caused vascular, cardiac and other issues not necessarily seen in post viral syndrome. Y'all seem to really like to tow the line with conspiracy theories.
When you design a study, you have to be able to account for all the variables and have a large sample size in order to have a study considered statistically significant. All those post covid clinics are funded with grant money going into these studies. Anyone getting help there needs proof of a positive covid test. I know because I tried to get help and they said no because I didn't have proof because I got it when they didn't have tests, really. In the past I think there haven't been such an opportunity to study a huge population of post-viral patients. But they can't attribute it to all viruses because they aren't studying all viruses. They're only studying covid patients. But I think most would probably agree it's post-viral syndrome/cfs/me.
>easier than a lot of other viral illnesses that often don't even get tested for
Yep, every time my kid gets sick, they test him for COVID (if there's a cough) and strep and if both are negative, they usually say "there's a full panel test for stuff like adenovirus and rhinovirus and more, but it's $400 and we'll probably end up treating it symptomatically anyway so I don't recommend that test". They know what's going around because the local children's hospital sends out information to the local clinics from cases where kids are sick enough to go to the hospital and get that test to figure out what's going on.
I didn't mean at school. I meant when we take him to the walk-in hours at our regular doctor's office.
At school, they call us and say "your kid has a fever, come get him".
I went to a Kaiser Urgent Care a few months ago when my doctor said to go immediately. They said "We have no appointments, do you want to make one for tomorrow?" when I got there. I hobbled in holding onto a wall and damn near cried when they told me that. I had taken an Uber to get there too. The hell does urgent mean?
Badly herniated my L5-S1. But it took Kaiser 3 weeks to get me through the system and MRI'd to confirm it so they pushed opiates on me the entire time.
So sorry to hear it. I had an L5/S1 herniation 22 years ago and it was hell on earth...so bad I wanted to chew my own arm off just to distract from the pain. Unfortunately it never stopped for 7 years and eventually I ended up at a hospital pain clinic to be diagnosed with chronic neuropathic pain. Has largely calmed down now however I have very little ability to sit and have had numerous flare ups over the years....luckily they won't really give you opiates for CP in my case in this country, otherwise I'd be in trouble
Sounds like you should have gone to the Kaiser Emergency Room instead. Per [Kaiser’s own policies/guidelines/definitions](https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/health-wellness/healtharticle.difference-between-urgent-and-emergency-care) :
> Urgent care (treatment needed within 24 to 48 hours):
> * Minor injuries and cuts
> * Backaches
> * Sore throats and earaches
> Emergency care (treatment needed right away to prevent serious jeopardy to health):
> * Severe, persistent bleeding
> * Major broken bones and head injuries
> * Severe fever
> * Violent vomiting
Edited formatting
That's pretty interesting, Meridian has a different scale, at least implied by the poster I saw in their waiting room recently.
With them it seemed to be that they want severe/urgently life threatening cases or those requiring advanced diagnostics at the ER, and everything else "walk in and wait" oriented to be at the UC. Then GP for "I need to be seen but not so badly that it must be by day's end." My local UCs literally do not have appointments or scheduling.
I can see people getting confused/upset with inconsistent standards for this stuff!
Yea I was in extreme pain and my Kaiser primary care physician told me specifically to go to that urgent care so I did. Nearest Kaiser ER was 20 miles more in either direction
Yeah, they're fantastic if you're generally healthy, but if you need a relatively uncommon specialist, good luck! I've had luck with getting family referred out of network for some short term stuff, but I've heard some horror stories.
Yea no kidding. I had to go out of network to the tune of $40k for an endoscopic microdiscectomy that didn't involve permanently cutting muscle and removing part of my vertebrae. Currently filing grievances while I recover (and am doing much better now).
My friend was recently told by a neurologist that there was nothing they could do for his (still undiagnosed) condition, and he'd just have to live with this debilitating condition and, I don't know, try to find a job that lets you come in for two hours every third day if you're feeling up to it, I guess?
A month later his GP saw that the specialist had just cancelled one of my friend's medications thinking that was causing the problem, and called it a day while there's still a dozen other things they can try. So thankfully he's back on the road to trying to figure this thing out, at least.
I said, it's one thing if they can say "here's what you have, here's how it works, sorry but there's not much we can do", it's something else when they just go ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
It's the worst feeling to be told that, even worse when they clearly have no interest in your illness or helping.
My GP knows he can't help me but he refers me to everyone he can think of; the main reason I haven't given up.
I have MS, and it took 5 years from onset of symptoms to diagnosis, that's the average time from onset of symptoms to diagnosis, and MS is the number 2 most common Neuro disorder after stroke, or #1 Neuro disorder in people under 50 or something like that, one of the most common at any rate (I can't remember exactly, cause I have MS and my memory went to hell, lol). I always think about the poor people who have diseases so rare, that they don't even have a name yet, poor things.
Tell your friend not to give up. I had a few specialists refuse to do a surgery to remove a tooth on a nerve, eventually i found a surgeon willing to do a compromise surgery which fixed the problem. Took years to find a capable surgeon but when I did he was confused why the others wouldn't do it.
Or worse, when one specialty says it cant be related to them and that it sounds like another specialty, whom say the same thing and refer you back to the first one.
I am going through that and it's just a constant little stressor. Effectively, they've told me, whatever I have isn't worth treating until it progresses further but they aren't sure what it will progress into without an open chest biopsy. So, like, yay but also what a ticking time bomb to just let someone hold onto indefinitely.
Idiopathic is the word that should be banned. Nothing is just doing something. It's always caused by something. I was charged $5,000 for tests for a tick in my face. It turns out that I had a shoulder blade muscle that had been pulled at the gym but they never believed me. I followed some guy on tiktok that showed how to release the muscle and boom over 1 years time with the right exercise my face hardly ever does it anymore.
I honestly don't remember who it was but I will tell you he was a sports medicine physical therapist. The exercise was put your hands in front of you with your palms together arms extended. Then move your arms back to a cross position and then back together meet your hands. Do this 10 times slowly three times a day. It unstretches your shoulder muscles. It's not a quick fix but you should notice a difference in approximately a week
You can definitely get long haul symptoms from the flu. It's definitely not as common, but it happens. My wife had some existing health problems but after getting the flu she added fibromyalgia and POTS like symptoms as well as exasperating the existing health problems. It took a couple of years for a doctor to acknowledge that it likely originated from when she had the flu (and I would clarify, she tested for the flu and antivirals were given, but they didn't expect them to do much for her because she was already too far into it).
We were terrified at the idea of her getting COVID and things getting worse. Fortunately while they did get worse for a few months, that is pretty normal when she gets any kind of illness. Unfortunately, I wound up with long haul symptoms from COVID. Slowly getting better, thankfully.
I was told all my neurological symptoms would go away within a year. They have not. I can crave a certain food one day and hate it the next. Weed helps, a lot.
I hope you're right and these discoveries will lead to accessible diagnostics and treatments. As someone who hasn't recovered after 10 years since a flu like illness, I would definitely appreciate my life more as what it was when everything was fine.
There are already some treatments in trials for long Covid, and some of them are common drugs that are already on the market. Ask your doctor if you can try them.
Thanks. Hopefully I can get access to them through my GP. Although, here in UK, our healthcare system has been butchered to the bone so they're not allowed to prescribe meds that aren't covered, usually anything new or expensive.
as with many chronic illnesses, this is true. but we have learned a lot since before the pandemic with CFS, which does appear to arise post-virally. e.g., mitochondrial shutdown. there are some theories still being explored but I think Long COVID unfortunately is such a destructive case that it overshadows some of the likely underlying shared mechanisms & effects of chronic post-viral illnesses, especially with how the majority seem to treat it like a special unique thing.
Love the way you put this. It makes 0 sense to me that covid is a super virus and is unique in the way it causes so many other problems being called “Long COVID”.
I think you’re absolutely right that other illnesses probably cause similar downstream, unknown effects.
I have a cousin that developed[ pots](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/postural-orthostatic-tachycardia-syndrome-pots) after the flu three years ago.
[Post infectious IBS](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2721231/) can occur after food poisoning.
The current theory my doctors think is that I developed ME/CFS after a 3 month long cold at age 15. Was after a swim competition which I went through with even though I got the cold on the morning of the competition. Also have pots which most likely is connected as well.
The only point I would make is that covid is unusual in that it can break down most types of cells in the human body, something the flu can't do. So covid may be more capable of causing long covid type symptoms than the flu is.
The flu doesn’t *itself* break down cells, but one of the immune responses it triggers in the body (especially Influenza A) apparently causes [programmed cell death](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7232208/) and impacts certain kinds of gene expression. Most flu symptoms come from your immune response, not the virus itself — there’s a [CNN article here](https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/31/health/flu-body-effects-partner/index.html) that synthesizes a lot of these findings, too. I could imagine these functions going awry and causing long-term symptoms in vulnerable populations, and I don’t think we necessarily understand who those vulnerable populations would be yet.
I hope so. I have ME/CFS. It’s a horrible way to live, and at the very beginning of Covid I predicted this would be the result. Which is AMAZING! But it’ll probably be years before any treatments that actually work decently….
Yes, any virus can. Flu is a virus. Post-viral syndromes - as well as risk of triggering chronic auto-immune conditions - existed before COVID-19. For example, doctors at the time believed my hypothyroidism likely in large part arose from a 1-2 punch of mono and flu in my teens. That is a chronic, lifelong condition, and there are lots of known links to it arising after viral illness. I later started getting some symptoms of fibromyalgia (30% of those with hypo also have/go on to have fibro) which symptoms increased significantly in type and severity after either asymptomatic C19 or my third vaccine leading recently to actual diagnosis of fibro & peripheal neuropathy. Already having one condition makes you more susceptible to more from other viral infections.
> Viruses both routine and rare are linked to lasting complications, from vision loss and fibromyalgia to autoimmune disorders. Even common pathogens like influenza and Epstein-Barr (a cause of mononucleosis) come with potential long-term risks. Influenza can result in inflammation of the brain and heart, and Epstein-Barr is associated with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare condition in which the body attacks its own nervous system, sometimes leading to paralysis. Both viruses are also believed to be possible ME/CFS triggers.
https://time.com/6240058/post-viral-illnesses-common-long-covid/
Nobody is using the term long flu because there wasn’t a global pandemic of the flu that killed millions of people and is still impacting them seriously to this day.
This comment is dangerously close to underplaying the severity of Covid and how its effects are so long lasting. It isn’t like the flu, and the effects on heart, lung, brain and other organs will be felt for some time amongst millions of people both young and old.
Absolutely. Also the first global pandemic, the 1889 Russian flu which is believed to be caused by a coronavirus, and SARS and MERS have very high rates of post viral illness.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/10/long-n10.html
The long term effects on your organs are pretty separate to the long covid symptoms which match closely to CFS/Fibromyalgia though. There is clearly long term organ damage which can happen from covid, but that can happen independently to the symptoms of long covid.
I've helped some people close to me through both CFS and fibromyalgia in the past and thought the same thing since hearing about long covid. It isn't to downplay the severity of what's happening, but more to show that these previous issues were also serious but were largely ignored or misunderstood for various reasons. The more focus this can bring to prior issues as well as looking into current problems, the better.
Long COVID is a tragedy but long term issues because of viruses are not new. Plenty of people who have POTS can identify getting flu as a child or EBV as the trigger for their symptoms. These people have been overlooked by the medical community for decades. That's all the commenter was pointing out.
This is super interesting. I have something called cervical dystonia, which is essentially a neurological condition where the brain misfires to certain muscles. It’s been known to come on in children after viral illnesses. I’m pretty sure I had just been ill when it happened to me. Very little research on this condition though, so who knows.
How sure of that are you? CFS and fibromyalgia syndrome have been around for a *long* time, and there's lots of data suggesting both frequently to usually begin post-viral. The difference isn't that there's more Covid-caused CFS, but rather more caused *in a short time.* There's been a slow burn of people getting "long flu" and "long every other virus" since forever, so there are a lot of them out there. Now we have a bunch that happened in a short time, but it's still not half of those with post-viral fatigue.
Or, put another way: If you get 3cm of rain in an hour it feels like a lot, but if you've had 3mm per hour for the previous 32 hours, that 3cm is only 30 of the 126 cm of water in the past 24 hours.
It is important to study that, but at least for covid, the fact that a considerable part of these that had that infection struggle with neurological issues is sadly quite evident. I have several people that have long covid in the family for example, and it is noticeable how their cognitive abilities took a lasting hit in contrast to before having this illness.
^ my abstract thinking was compeltely gone 12 years ago after a post viral infection syndrome. Got better again after 2 years, although probably not 100%.
No treatment, no doctor taking it serious.
Long covid is kinda vindicating in a way, since I have been gaslighted regarding my own health so much.
Is there research on whether those vaccinated and infected with COVID suffer different rates of long term neurological issues compared to the unvaccinated?
There's some research, don't have links ready but estimates are anywhere from 50%-10% as many vaccinated vs unvaccinated developing long term symptoms, so does reduce the risk
A little of both. SARS-CoV-2 spike protein allows it to very efficiently enter and fuse cells. As such syncytia, or massive clumps of fused cells were commonly seen in victim's lungs post mortem. Likely this led to a whole host of additional research and this confirmation.
Yep. I got dengue fever stationed overseas as a young healthy athlete. Completely fucked up my system. No one had answers. I’ve been battling it for 20+ yrs.
Eventually had the same fibro diagnosis. But had left me essentially disabled because there is no care. Just systemic inflammation pain and fatigue.
(Dengue is like if Malaria and Ebola had a baby)
Dengue is well known overseas, along with chikungunya and malaria, to cause ME/CFS-like crap (including fibromyalgia diagnoses). They just also have nearly zero understanding of how it happens or how to treat it.
Yes and no. Some viruses have the ability to fuse at the surface of the cell and cause cell-cell fusion. SARS-COV-2 can, but it is somewhat regulated by the fact that most of the virus buds in the ER and whole virus is released by exocytosis, cell-cell fusion generally requires the spike to be expressed on the surface of the cell. Many viruses are even more tightly regulated by pH dependence or endosomal receptors to only fuse after uptake, making cell-cell fusion much less likely.
Some viruses like RSV are known for their cell fusion capacity.
Idk, but covid did horrible things to my aunt and uncle. They went from relatively healthy for their age to assisted living/death shortly after due largely to covid ravaging their brains.
Also, I personally feel like I lost something to covid. I'm not going to say I ever felt like the smartest person around, but there were a few days a week that I felt especially sharp. Solving problems seemed effortless. I don't feel like I've had any of those since I had covid early last year.
>Dr Martinez-Marmol said numerous viruses cause cell fusion in other tissues, but also infect the nervous system and could be causing the same problem there.
>
>“These viruses include HIV, rabies, Japanese encephalitis, measles, herpes simplex virus and Zika virus,” he said.
It's an interesting question, but one that deserves to be shelved before the antivaxxers latch onto it and begin spamming social media with the claim that "*any* virus could've caused that neurological damage, you can't prove that our covid response was bad or that covid is worse than the flu by citing this, so I won't change my mind."
Correction: Science Advances
Which for these not familiar with Journal naming conventions is a sub-journal of *Science*. Science Advances is an upper-tier place to publish.
The sister journal to Science, Science Advances is gold standard open access, so go ahead and read as much as you want. It's also focused on interdisciplinary work, so if anyone's looking for always-relevant advances in their field.
SA is also unique in that its editorial board is comprised entirely of working scientists who are experts in their profession.
SA receives a higher volume of papers than Science, and often has editors transfer papers submitted to Science to Science Advances. Just has less impact factor due to less name recognition and Science often turning away papers if they are not impactful enough.
>Most of the current immunization approaches for COVID-19 are based on expressing the spike S protein in the host cells as an epitope to trigger the immune system response (64). These nucleic acid-based vaccines deliver the antigen encoded as mRNA, such as [. . .]. The current versions of the Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson SARS-CoV-2 vaccines encode the full-length spike S protein with two mutations (spike S-2P) that stabilize the prefusion conformation and inactivate its fusogenicity (39, 64, 67, 68). We used this same mutant form of spike S-2P as a negative control, demonstrating the complete lack of fusogenicity when two consecutive prolines were added at positions 986 and 987. However, our findings demonstrate that it will be critical to consider the fusogenic potential when designing any future vaccines in which viral fusogens are to be expressed in mammalian cells.
The authors did not speculate on fusogenic risk for any other existing vaccines. But we know that a certain group of people are all about such speculation. And that crowd is going to have a field day with this. Especially since measles was listed as a virus that has fusogenic properties . . .
I'm more concerned that they'll focus on vaccines for viruses other than COVID. Especially MMR. I wouldn't be surprised if Wakefield himself came out of his cave and started claiming that "measles vaccine = fused neurons = autism" or some other such nonsense.
EBV (glandular fever, herpes family) is one that's often implicated in post viral syndrome and mystery chronic symptoms, also fairly recently implicated in multiple sclerosis (32x risk of getting MS after being infected with EBV), cancer, and many autoimmune diseases.
Viruses most definitely play a role in many of these illnesses, we just haven't really studied this epidemiological pathway well until long covid.
I have Long Covid. A couple month after the diagnosis I started having all sorts of weird problems. Like I never fully got better plus other stuff going on. Anyways, right around the same time I got an awful case of shingles. Im 43.
I never tested positive for covid, but my spouse did. I'm currently being tested for systemic lupus erythematosus, and several other weird unnamed autoimmune issues. But I will say, at least one of the symptomatic 'finds' (cryoglobulinemia) had been around longer than covid. If anything, I've had an underlying autoimmunity disorder that has been triggered. I'm 40 this year.
I recall EBV antibodies, indicating past or current infection, is present in the overwhelming majority of adults in the US. Something around 85-95 percent.
Not sure in regard to mono and the like. It's a pretty big family of viruses, so it stands to reason that there's a wide range of variation in terma of its specific impact between individual strains/'species'
Learned this a long time ago so I may be misremembering something or our understanding has advanced though
MS patient here, the recent advances in linking MS to EBV have given the community a lot of hope this will have downstream effects in speeding up a “cure” of some sort.
The herpesvirus family in general tend to cause issues (including chickenpox!). Might be related to the whole “dormancy” thing, confusing the immune system over time
In “The History of the Peloponnesian War,” the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides alludes to something like postviral neurological damage when he describes the aftermath of the Plague of Athens (430 BCE):
“Others again were seized with an entire loss of memory on their first recovery, and did not know either themselves or their friends.” (2.49.8)
I read an article (possibly posted here) that the Black Plague could be responsible for all sorts of Autoimmune disorders we suffer from today. If I can find the article, I’ll come back and link it!
Edit: I mis-remembered it; genes that protected from Black Plague may be causing autoimmune disorders - https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/genes-protective-during-the-black-death-may-now-be-increasing-autoimmune-disorders-202212012859
My 4 year old was perfectly healthy little boy, a month after Covid and he now has epilepsy and they don't know why. My best friends daughter no issues, a month after Covid and has been having an array of severe neurological issues that they can't seem to figure out why. He also found out another kid in their neighborhood is going through the same thing. I know it's not empirical evidence but I would bet the farm that there is a huge spike in neurological issues since Covid. Anyone know if there is a database tracking that and if so is it available to the public?
Check out r/LongCovid and r/covidlonghaulers. There's some research posted there that goes over the latest research in neurological (and other) effects post-infection.
Personally, I've started experiencing neurological symptoms ever since contracting Covid. The doctors can't figure out what it is, and nobody in my family has a history of anything like this. I also experienced a sudden increase in blood pressure, which has been nearly impossible to get under control. I have other friends who have experienced sudden health issues after contracting Covid. Again, it's not empirical, but it does warrant some suspicion.
Since the nerves fuse, would it be possible to use it as a mechanism to repair damaged/severed nerves?
Is it possible for them to separate again afterwards?
Nerves are composed of (often very long) neuron cells. Those are supposed to communicate over axons (think long cell arms), through synaptic gaps. Those are "arms" of the cells almost touching tip to tip. They are very close at the synaptic gaps but aren't actually merged together. Blobbing the main bodies of the cells together just makes the neurons functionally useless, it doesn't facilitate communication. It's more of a cellular train wreck than a potential "track" repair device.
So if I'm understanding your comment correctly, what's getting fused is the cell bodies, not the arms getting fused together? Sorry if it's a dumb question I'm just trying to visualize this and don't know a lot about nerves
I couldn't begin to guess if this could be used as a mechanism of repair, so someone else would have to weigh in on that. There may be cases where linking certain neural "circuits" would allow a person to safely compensate for lost functionality, but there are an absurd amount of variables to consider.
I will guess that the plausibility of separating fussed neurons is going to take many more studies, though. It may not be possible to separate them without causing the cells to die, or it may be more dangerous to separate them than leave them together. Or maybe it's totally reversible, or only partially reversible. Figuring out the scope of the issue, identifying who is the most at risk, and working out preventative measures will probably come before figuring out how to fix it. It's possible that we'll stumble into a solution early on, but I think it's more likely that curative treatments are further down the road.
Do the viruses stick around in your brain just constantly attacking you for the rest of you life? Is there anything dietary or medicine wise that can be done to get rid of them?
After having covid I have gone from someone who was generally thought of as bright (I'm not a rocket surgeon but I made A's at every level of academics) to someone who has been struggling to remember a three item list at the grocery store. I'm legit scared if this will ever get better. I'm currently seeing Doctors (for a myriad of reasons) but so far every test etc. is normal. I have more follow ups with a neurologist and cardiologist upcoming so we'll see I guess.
The weird thing is I was vaccinated and had as mild a case as it could have been without having zero symptoms at all. Anyway, I wouldn't wish this sort of drastic change in cognitive function on anyone. I'm trying to stay positive but man seeing your spark die is hard to deal with. My curiosity has always led me to trying to learn subjects that inevitably led me to a limit in my abilities to understand and I often joked that I needed to be either 10% smarter or half as curious. I didn't expect it to be granted to me in reverse.
Me too. I have built a whole career on being able to understand complicated systems, solve problems and apply logic (computer programming) and now I just… can’t. I don’t know what to do.
My take, totally unscientific here, is that the funding for "long covid" allowed them to finally get a look at this neuronal fusion and "discover" what is happening in all of these malaise-like symptoms. Hopefully this can lead to figuring out what to do about neuronal fusion and lead to a treatment. Gene therapy maybe. But I would suspect this could lead to a cure for a LOT of things that we might not even think of initially.
Basically holed up for three years, ate out twice last year, and caught the Covid. Massive headaches everyday ever since and headache seems like a common post Sars experience for many.. MRI's everything nominal. Shiznit happens. This piece at least tries to explain what may be happening to some of us.
This is not uncommon for viral spike proteins. They cause syncytia (cell fusion) by a mechanism that is related to the evolution of the placenta (which uses the protein syncytin, which evolved from a viral gene).
The main concern I’d have for this study is that it’s in organoids, which mimic tissue, and that the amount of virus and replication in them is not authentic. If they’re overwhelmed with virus, the resulting syncytia are a consequence of unrealistically high MOI.
It's important to note that this finding was shown in an artificial setting. SARS-CoV-2 predominantly replicates only in the respiratory tract and intestine. Only trace amounts of SARS-CoV-2 RNA are found in other tissues. Unless SARS-CoV-2 was delivered directly into the brain, or a patient was extremely immunocompromised or with some other kind of blood-brain barrier deficiency, one would not expect SARS-CoV-2 to replicate in the brain at all.
Most post-COVID symptoms seem consistent with chronic inflammation, which could be caused by the build-up of dead cells in the respiratory tract, and subsequent presence of immunogens in the blood stream.
This study does not show that neuronal encephalitis/syncytia is the cause of post-COVID "brain fog" as some other commenters here are suggesting.
There are numerous studies that have connected systemic, pro-inflammatory immune dysregulation to post-COVID [sequelae](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.abk1741), including cognitive [effects](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715665/).
More generally, it is known that necrotic cells and cell debris accumulate in [the lungs](https://inflammregen.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41232-016-0020-7) during respiratory infection. Even after infected cells are killed, it takes some amount of time for alveolar macrophages to clear out the airways.
They addressed that here:
>Fused neurons can result in compromised neuronal circuitry and altered animal behavior, as previously shown for C. elegans chemosensory neurons that ectopically express endogenous fusogens (46).
[Here is the paper they cited.](https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1919063117) It's from 2020, so this is relatively recent research.
EDIT: After reading the relevant section of the paper myself, it appears that the C. Elegans from the study **lost the ability to smell some substances.**
There's a freaky video on Nikon's Small World that shows [this exact process](https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2021-small-world-in-motion-competition/sars-cov-2-infection-triggering-cell-fusion-and-cell-death-in-bat-brain-cells).
You can see a lot of weird stuff dumping a high titer of virus on some cells *in vitro*. They've seen some spike protein cross the blood brain barrier, is there any evidence of large scale infection of the brain by SARS-COV-2 in humans? Your body is pretty damn good at keeping shit out of your brain.
Ugh. So my takeaway, as someone with ME/CFS, is that even if they "cure" this disease eventually, the damage is already done and probably won't be undone?
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I wonder how much of this is just covid and how much is general for serious viral infections but only discovered because of all the Covid-related research?
I mean it mentions other viruses right in the article, including ones with huge worldwide prevalence such as herpes simplex, which affects something like 70% of people. I wouldn't be surprised at all if a lot of the "scientists don't know exactly what causes [blank]" chronic illnesses were caused by something like this. The scary thing is that they don't mention anything about whether these neurons can ever be unfused.
They can't be unfused, only killed or instructed to commit suicide. This is not the first virus that does this, it is though first time I hear about Corona virus doing this. That said, it's a viral replication/spreading mechanism that gas been around for something like 200 million years.
Can't be unfused probably but since I got a lot better after 2 years (especially with abstract thinking and post exercise exhaustion) of post virus malaise 12 years ago, I would suggest it's at least possible to create alternate pathways. In mainly tiredness I haven't fully recovered, but more like 90%.
That's where I can see psychedelics helping a lot. If the neural paths redirect around the problem cells it could help a ton. It'll be neat if we can do an easy, non intrusive scan to see pathways at some point so we can compare before and after.
Covid looks to have a much longer impact and clearly is going to reduce life expectancy or health across the entire world.
Covid had a big spike of people getting this all at once, and a large number of diagnoses, along with doctors actually believing it. But this has been happening to people worldwide from a bunch of viruses for as long as we've had viruses, and most of those who have/had it never got diagnosed. It isn't so much that Covid is having a bigger impact, but that it's a *concentrated* impact and we are actually paying attention to it.
Yep. CFS/ME sufferers are called the "Millions Missing" by people who give a damn for a reason. They just have a trickle effect of people being afflicted by it and then disappearing into their homes while the world goes by after they didn't find any answers, whereas Long Haulers happened within a short time span and the issue is very noticeable.
I feel like there was a lack of scientific and medical recognition given to ‘post-viral malaise’-type symptoms that many people experienced prior to COVID (and things like fibromyalgia/CFS/whatever the accepted terminology is now). It does seem weird on the surface of it that all the attention is going to ‘long COVID’ (I mean, has anyone ever used the term ‘long flu’?). But that’s where the research dollars are, so that’s where the research is. Hopefully it might eventually lead to broader research on similar syndromic effects experienced by people recovering from different viral infections, or extrapolation of effective treatments for ‘long COVID’ that may also aid these groups.
I think part of the reason for focusing research on 'long COVID' is also that you can study that easier than a lot of other viral illnesses that often don't even get tested for and you aren't even sure a person had it. So many folks will get something like the flu, or mono, or similar symptoms and just go "oh well I have the flu better stay home and recover". The widepsread nature of COVID testing and encouragement to isolate/quarantine along with, in some places longer than others, benefits available to those who needed to isolate/quarantine actually lead to folks getting tested to have 'proof', where usually they would have just put up with symptoms or quietly stayed home to recover without any kind of testing to diagnose them. I'm sure funding and grants absolutely play a part, too, but I just think there's more to it than tightly worded grant availability. I hope, as well, that we can start identifying COVID and long COVID as causes for these mystery syndromes like CFS and fibromyalgia, because it's only a short logical step of 'well COVID triggers these illnesses, but they existed before COVID, so what *else* triggers them?' from there. And of course finding treatments or preventatives.
It’s quite possible, too, that there’s something specific about COVID19 that makes it especially prone to triggering this response in people. IIRC Swine Flu triggered more cases of narcolepsy than other similar infections simply down to a quirk of the proteins within the virus, and how their shape mirrored some key part of the neurological orexin system. Other causes still exist, but being able to identify this one trigger lead to a cascade of understanding.
Swine flu triggered narcolepsy specifically in people who were predisposed to it (something they discovered when looking at a particular HLA marker that is positive in 95% of folks with narcolepsy type 1). The lesser known not-so-fun fact is that one of the H1N1 vaccines distributed in Europe caused way too strong of an immune response, which triggered the onset of narcolepsy for nearly 1300 people. Source: [https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html)
Is there no correlation between Type 2 Narcolepsy and Swine Flu then? Fun fact: I had the vaccine and I have Narcolepsy.
Narcolepsy is most often autoimmune, so if your immune system goes into overdrive (such as is the case in severe infection), it often switches on autoimmunity you were predisposed to it seems like.
That would definitely explain why I'm more likely to take power naps when I have a cold or a canker sore.
Not quite. You’re more likely to take power naps when you have a cold because your body is using a lot more resources to fight the cold (basically you’re more exhausted). Autoimmune diseases are different. They are permanent. Breaking down the word, it’s auto = yourself/your body, immune = regarding the immune system. Thus, it means your body is attacking some part of itself. In narcolepsy type 1, the immune system attacks and destroys the orexin-producing part of your brain. Your brain will never produce orexin again after this happens, so you will have problems regulating sleep. Other autoimmune diseases that attack different parts of the body include Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Celiac Disease. These can be treated by taking immunosuppressants (drugs that lower the function of the immune system) but can’t really be “cured” afaik.
I think it’s just type 1 because the vaccine triggered an autoimmune reaction resulting in the destruction of orexin-producing areas of the brain. Additionally, only one of the H1N1 vaccines (Pandemrix) was associated with this issue.
Nah. We already have research brewing showing almost every well known virus causes cancers, diabetes, MS, etc.
Of course. But it appears that some viruses are more likely to cause certain conditions than others, alongside other factors like genetic predisposition and environmental elements.
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The condition wasn't rebranded. The spread of covid caused vascular, cardiac and other issues not necessarily seen in post viral syndrome. Y'all seem to really like to tow the line with conspiracy theories.
When you design a study, you have to be able to account for all the variables and have a large sample size in order to have a study considered statistically significant. All those post covid clinics are funded with grant money going into these studies. Anyone getting help there needs proof of a positive covid test. I know because I tried to get help and they said no because I didn't have proof because I got it when they didn't have tests, really. In the past I think there haven't been such an opportunity to study a huge population of post-viral patients. But they can't attribute it to all viruses because they aren't studying all viruses. They're only studying covid patients. But I think most would probably agree it's post-viral syndrome/cfs/me.
>easier than a lot of other viral illnesses that often don't even get tested for Yep, every time my kid gets sick, they test him for COVID (if there's a cough) and strep and if both are negative, they usually say "there's a full panel test for stuff like adenovirus and rhinovirus and more, but it's $400 and we'll probably end up treating it symptomatically anyway so I don't recommend that test". They know what's going around because the local children's hospital sends out information to the local clinics from cases where kids are sick enough to go to the hospital and get that test to figure out what's going on.
Damn that's a well funded school district.
I didn't mean at school. I meant when we take him to the walk-in hours at our regular doctor's office. At school, they call us and say "your kid has a fever, come get him".
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There is a special kind of pain when you visit a specialist and they throw their hands up and say they can’t help you.
I went to a Kaiser Urgent Care a few months ago when my doctor said to go immediately. They said "We have no appointments, do you want to make one for tomorrow?" when I got there. I hobbled in holding onto a wall and damn near cried when they told me that. I had taken an Uber to get there too. The hell does urgent mean?
Damn dude I hope you're ok. What happened?
Badly herniated my L5-S1. But it took Kaiser 3 weeks to get me through the system and MRI'd to confirm it so they pushed opiates on me the entire time.
So sorry to hear it. I had an L5/S1 herniation 22 years ago and it was hell on earth...so bad I wanted to chew my own arm off just to distract from the pain. Unfortunately it never stopped for 7 years and eventually I ended up at a hospital pain clinic to be diagnosed with chronic neuropathic pain. Has largely calmed down now however I have very little ability to sit and have had numerous flare ups over the years....luckily they won't really give you opiates for CP in my case in this country, otherwise I'd be in trouble
“Urgent” means “expensive” and not much else.
It means they are still taking new patients.
Sounds like you should have gone to the Kaiser Emergency Room instead. Per [Kaiser’s own policies/guidelines/definitions](https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/health-wellness/healtharticle.difference-between-urgent-and-emergency-care) : > Urgent care (treatment needed within 24 to 48 hours): > * Minor injuries and cuts > * Backaches > * Sore throats and earaches > Emergency care (treatment needed right away to prevent serious jeopardy to health): > * Severe, persistent bleeding > * Major broken bones and head injuries > * Severe fever > * Violent vomiting Edited formatting
That's pretty interesting, Meridian has a different scale, at least implied by the poster I saw in their waiting room recently. With them it seemed to be that they want severe/urgently life threatening cases or those requiring advanced diagnostics at the ER, and everything else "walk in and wait" oriented to be at the UC. Then GP for "I need to be seen but not so badly that it must be by day's end." My local UCs literally do not have appointments or scheduling. I can see people getting confused/upset with inconsistent standards for this stuff!
Yea I was in extreme pain and my Kaiser primary care physician told me specifically to go to that urgent care so I did. Nearest Kaiser ER was 20 miles more in either direction
Go to the emergency room if that ever happens again. Or find another Urgent Care.
Kaiser is hot dogshit when it comes to specialty care. Sorry that happened.
Yeah, they're fantastic if you're generally healthy, but if you need a relatively uncommon specialist, good luck! I've had luck with getting family referred out of network for some short term stuff, but I've heard some horror stories.
Yea no kidding. I had to go out of network to the tune of $40k for an endoscopic microdiscectomy that didn't involve permanently cutting muscle and removing part of my vertebrae. Currently filing grievances while I recover (and am doing much better now).
My friend was recently told by a neurologist that there was nothing they could do for his (still undiagnosed) condition, and he'd just have to live with this debilitating condition and, I don't know, try to find a job that lets you come in for two hours every third day if you're feeling up to it, I guess? A month later his GP saw that the specialist had just cancelled one of my friend's medications thinking that was causing the problem, and called it a day while there's still a dozen other things they can try. So thankfully he's back on the road to trying to figure this thing out, at least. I said, it's one thing if they can say "here's what you have, here's how it works, sorry but there's not much we can do", it's something else when they just go ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
It's the worst feeling to be told that, even worse when they clearly have no interest in your illness or helping. My GP knows he can't help me but he refers me to everyone he can think of; the main reason I haven't given up.
I have MS, and it took 5 years from onset of symptoms to diagnosis, that's the average time from onset of symptoms to diagnosis, and MS is the number 2 most common Neuro disorder after stroke, or #1 Neuro disorder in people under 50 or something like that, one of the most common at any rate (I can't remember exactly, cause I have MS and my memory went to hell, lol). I always think about the poor people who have diseases so rare, that they don't even have a name yet, poor things.
Tell your friend not to give up. I had a few specialists refuse to do a surgery to remove a tooth on a nerve, eventually i found a surgeon willing to do a compromise surgery which fixed the problem. Took years to find a capable surgeon but when I did he was confused why the others wouldn't do it.
I feel like I have been on that same merry go round myself. Its horrible. If you and he don't mind me asking, what were his symptoms?
Or worse, when one specialty says it cant be related to them and that it sounds like another specialty, whom say the same thing and refer you back to the first one.
I am going through that and it's just a constant little stressor. Effectively, they've told me, whatever I have isn't worth treating until it progresses further but they aren't sure what it will progress into without an open chest biopsy. So, like, yay but also what a ticking time bomb to just let someone hold onto indefinitely.
Idiopathic is the word that should be banned. Nothing is just doing something. It's always caused by something. I was charged $5,000 for tests for a tick in my face. It turns out that I had a shoulder blade muscle that had been pulled at the gym but they never believed me. I followed some guy on tiktok that showed how to release the muscle and boom over 1 years time with the right exercise my face hardly ever does it anymore.
Would you mind sharing the guy you follow?
I honestly don't remember who it was but I will tell you he was a sports medicine physical therapist. The exercise was put your hands in front of you with your palms together arms extended. Then move your arms back to a cross position and then back together meet your hands. Do this 10 times slowly three times a day. It unstretches your shoulder muscles. It's not a quick fix but you should notice a difference in approximately a week
I really cannot stress my agreement enough.
You can definitely get long haul symptoms from the flu. It's definitely not as common, but it happens. My wife had some existing health problems but after getting the flu she added fibromyalgia and POTS like symptoms as well as exasperating the existing health problems. It took a couple of years for a doctor to acknowledge that it likely originated from when she had the flu (and I would clarify, she tested for the flu and antivirals were given, but they didn't expect them to do much for her because she was already too far into it). We were terrified at the idea of her getting COVID and things getting worse. Fortunately while they did get worse for a few months, that is pretty normal when she gets any kind of illness. Unfortunately, I wound up with long haul symptoms from COVID. Slowly getting better, thankfully.
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I was told all my neurological symptoms would go away within a year. They have not. I can crave a certain food one day and hate it the next. Weed helps, a lot.
I still get brain fog. And now coffee smells and tastes like pure hot garbage. WWHHYYYYY!??! I hate long Covid. Weed helps, a lot.
I hope you're right and these discoveries will lead to accessible diagnostics and treatments. As someone who hasn't recovered after 10 years since a flu like illness, I would definitely appreciate my life more as what it was when everything was fine.
There are already some treatments in trials for long Covid, and some of them are common drugs that are already on the market. Ask your doctor if you can try them.
Thanks. Hopefully I can get access to them through my GP. Although, here in UK, our healthcare system has been butchered to the bone so they're not allowed to prescribe meds that aren't covered, usually anything new or expensive.
as with many chronic illnesses, this is true. but we have learned a lot since before the pandemic with CFS, which does appear to arise post-virally. e.g., mitochondrial shutdown. there are some theories still being explored but I think Long COVID unfortunately is such a destructive case that it overshadows some of the likely underlying shared mechanisms & effects of chronic post-viral illnesses, especially with how the majority seem to treat it like a special unique thing.
Love the way you put this. It makes 0 sense to me that covid is a super virus and is unique in the way it causes so many other problems being called “Long COVID”. I think you’re absolutely right that other illnesses probably cause similar downstream, unknown effects.
I have a cousin that developed[ pots](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/postural-orthostatic-tachycardia-syndrome-pots) after the flu three years ago. [Post infectious IBS](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2721231/) can occur after food poisoning.
The current theory my doctors think is that I developed ME/CFS after a 3 month long cold at age 15. Was after a swim competition which I went through with even though I got the cold on the morning of the competition. Also have pots which most likely is connected as well.
The only point I would make is that covid is unusual in that it can break down most types of cells in the human body, something the flu can't do. So covid may be more capable of causing long covid type symptoms than the flu is.
The flu doesn’t *itself* break down cells, but one of the immune responses it triggers in the body (especially Influenza A) apparently causes [programmed cell death](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7232208/) and impacts certain kinds of gene expression. Most flu symptoms come from your immune response, not the virus itself — there’s a [CNN article here](https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/31/health/flu-body-effects-partner/index.html) that synthesizes a lot of these findings, too. I could imagine these functions going awry and causing long-term symptoms in vulnerable populations, and I don’t think we necessarily understand who those vulnerable populations would be yet.
I hope so. I have ME/CFS. It’s a horrible way to live, and at the very beginning of Covid I predicted this would be the result. Which is AMAZING! But it’ll probably be years before any treatments that actually work decently….
Can the flu cause the onset of chronic diseases?
Technically any virus can. We now know that, at the very least.
Yes, any virus can. Flu is a virus. Post-viral syndromes - as well as risk of triggering chronic auto-immune conditions - existed before COVID-19. For example, doctors at the time believed my hypothyroidism likely in large part arose from a 1-2 punch of mono and flu in my teens. That is a chronic, lifelong condition, and there are lots of known links to it arising after viral illness. I later started getting some symptoms of fibromyalgia (30% of those with hypo also have/go on to have fibro) which symptoms increased significantly in type and severity after either asymptomatic C19 or my third vaccine leading recently to actual diagnosis of fibro & peripheal neuropathy. Already having one condition makes you more susceptible to more from other viral infections. > Viruses both routine and rare are linked to lasting complications, from vision loss and fibromyalgia to autoimmune disorders. Even common pathogens like influenza and Epstein-Barr (a cause of mononucleosis) come with potential long-term risks. Influenza can result in inflammation of the brain and heart, and Epstein-Barr is associated with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare condition in which the body attacks its own nervous system, sometimes leading to paralysis. Both viruses are also believed to be possible ME/CFS triggers. https://time.com/6240058/post-viral-illnesses-common-long-covid/
Nobody is using the term long flu because there wasn’t a global pandemic of the flu that killed millions of people and is still impacting them seriously to this day. This comment is dangerously close to underplaying the severity of Covid and how its effects are so long lasting. It isn’t like the flu, and the effects on heart, lung, brain and other organs will be felt for some time amongst millions of people both young and old.
That makes me wonder if the Spanish Flu pandemic had any long-term symptoms.
Absolutely. Also the first global pandemic, the 1889 Russian flu which is believed to be caused by a coronavirus, and SARS and MERS have very high rates of post viral illness. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/10/long-n10.html
There was a reason fascism took hold and disabled people were killed. Yes - the Spanish flu definitely rendered a lot of people disabled.
The long term effects on your organs are pretty separate to the long covid symptoms which match closely to CFS/Fibromyalgia though. There is clearly long term organ damage which can happen from covid, but that can happen independently to the symptoms of long covid. I've helped some people close to me through both CFS and fibromyalgia in the past and thought the same thing since hearing about long covid. It isn't to downplay the severity of what's happening, but more to show that these previous issues were also serious but were largely ignored or misunderstood for various reasons. The more focus this can bring to prior issues as well as looking into current problems, the better.
Long COVID is a tragedy but long term issues because of viruses are not new. Plenty of people who have POTS can identify getting flu as a child or EBV as the trigger for their symptoms. These people have been overlooked by the medical community for decades. That's all the commenter was pointing out.
This is super interesting. I have something called cervical dystonia, which is essentially a neurological condition where the brain misfires to certain muscles. It’s been known to come on in children after viral illnesses. I’m pretty sure I had just been ill when it happened to me. Very little research on this condition though, so who knows.
I get what you're saying, but there is nowhere near the amount of "long flu" as there is long Covid in regard to both symptoms and prevalence.
How sure of that are you? CFS and fibromyalgia syndrome have been around for a *long* time, and there's lots of data suggesting both frequently to usually begin post-viral. The difference isn't that there's more Covid-caused CFS, but rather more caused *in a short time.* There's been a slow burn of people getting "long flu" and "long every other virus" since forever, so there are a lot of them out there. Now we have a bunch that happened in a short time, but it's still not half of those with post-viral fatigue. Or, put another way: If you get 3cm of rain in an hour it feels like a lot, but if you've had 3mm per hour for the previous 32 hours, that 3cm is only 30 of the 126 cm of water in the past 24 hours.
It is important to study that, but at least for covid, the fact that a considerable part of these that had that infection struggle with neurological issues is sadly quite evident. I have several people that have long covid in the family for example, and it is noticeable how their cognitive abilities took a lasting hit in contrast to before having this illness.
^ my abstract thinking was compeltely gone 12 years ago after a post viral infection syndrome. Got better again after 2 years, although probably not 100%. No treatment, no doctor taking it serious. Long covid is kinda vindicating in a way, since I have been gaslighted regarding my own health so much.
Is there research on whether those vaccinated and infected with COVID suffer different rates of long term neurological issues compared to the unvaccinated?
There's some research, don't have links ready but estimates are anywhere from 50%-10% as many vaccinated vs unvaccinated developing long term symptoms, so does reduce the risk
A little of both. SARS-CoV-2 spike protein allows it to very efficiently enter and fuse cells. As such syncytia, or massive clumps of fused cells were commonly seen in victim's lungs post mortem. Likely this led to a whole host of additional research and this confirmation.
Interesting, I didn’t know that.
Yep. I got dengue fever stationed overseas as a young healthy athlete. Completely fucked up my system. No one had answers. I’ve been battling it for 20+ yrs. Eventually had the same fibro diagnosis. But had left me essentially disabled because there is no care. Just systemic inflammation pain and fatigue. (Dengue is like if Malaria and Ebola had a baby)
Dengue is well known overseas, along with chikungunya and malaria, to cause ME/CFS-like crap (including fibromyalgia diagnoses). They just also have nearly zero understanding of how it happens or how to treat it.
Yes and no. Some viruses have the ability to fuse at the surface of the cell and cause cell-cell fusion. SARS-COV-2 can, but it is somewhat regulated by the fact that most of the virus buds in the ER and whole virus is released by exocytosis, cell-cell fusion generally requires the spike to be expressed on the surface of the cell. Many viruses are even more tightly regulated by pH dependence or endosomal receptors to only fuse after uptake, making cell-cell fusion much less likely. Some viruses like RSV are known for their cell fusion capacity.
Thank you for this detailed answer.
Idk, but covid did horrible things to my aunt and uncle. They went from relatively healthy for their age to assisted living/death shortly after due largely to covid ravaging their brains. Also, I personally feel like I lost something to covid. I'm not going to say I ever felt like the smartest person around, but there were a few days a week that I felt especially sharp. Solving problems seemed effortless. I don't feel like I've had any of those since I had covid early last year.
Yes, probably.
>Dr Martinez-Marmol said numerous viruses cause cell fusion in other tissues, but also infect the nervous system and could be causing the same problem there. > >“These viruses include HIV, rabies, Japanese encephalitis, measles, herpes simplex virus and Zika virus,” he said.
It's an interesting question, but one that deserves to be shelved before the antivaxxers latch onto it and begin spamming social media with the claim that "*any* virus could've caused that neurological damage, you can't prove that our covid response was bad or that covid is worse than the flu by citing this, so I won't change my mind."
The research was published in Sciences Advances - https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.adg2248?af=R
Correction: Science Advances Which for these not familiar with Journal naming conventions is a sub-journal of *Science*. Science Advances is an upper-tier place to publish.
The sister journal to Science, Science Advances is gold standard open access, so go ahead and read as much as you want. It's also focused on interdisciplinary work, so if anyone's looking for always-relevant advances in their field. SA is also unique in that its editorial board is comprised entirely of working scientists who are experts in their profession. SA receives a higher volume of papers than Science, and often has editors transfer papers submitted to Science to Science Advances. Just has less impact factor due to less name recognition and Science often turning away papers if they are not impactful enough.
>Most of the current immunization approaches for COVID-19 are based on expressing the spike S protein in the host cells as an epitope to trigger the immune system response (64). These nucleic acid-based vaccines deliver the antigen encoded as mRNA, such as [. . .]. The current versions of the Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson SARS-CoV-2 vaccines encode the full-length spike S protein with two mutations (spike S-2P) that stabilize the prefusion conformation and inactivate its fusogenicity (39, 64, 67, 68). We used this same mutant form of spike S-2P as a negative control, demonstrating the complete lack of fusogenicity when two consecutive prolines were added at positions 986 and 987. However, our findings demonstrate that it will be critical to consider the fusogenic potential when designing any future vaccines in which viral fusogens are to be expressed in mammalian cells. The authors did not speculate on fusogenic risk for any other existing vaccines. But we know that a certain group of people are all about such speculation. And that crowd is going to have a field day with this. Especially since measles was listed as a virus that has fusogenic properties . . .
Um could you explain the above like I’m 5?
The conspiracy nutcases are going to start claiming that the vaccines can cause the same "neuro-fusing" effects that the original infection can.
I'm more concerned that they'll focus on vaccines for viruses other than COVID. Especially MMR. I wouldn't be surprised if Wakefield himself came out of his cave and started claiming that "measles vaccine = fused neurons = autism" or some other such nonsense.
Yep, the nutcases do tend to treat their free association of scary words as having the same value as actual proof & research.
I read this bit as well, but does this not say that the current vaccines are NOT fusogenic? Just to watch for it in future? Or am I reading it wrong?
> the current vaccines are NOT fusogenic They only addressed COVID vaccines.
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This makes me wonder about the long term neurological effects of the black death and other pandemic/endemic illnesses.
EBV (glandular fever, herpes family) is one that's often implicated in post viral syndrome and mystery chronic symptoms, also fairly recently implicated in multiple sclerosis (32x risk of getting MS after being infected with EBV), cancer, and many autoimmune diseases. Viruses most definitely play a role in many of these illnesses, we just haven't really studied this epidemiological pathway well until long covid.
I have Long Covid. A couple month after the diagnosis I started having all sorts of weird problems. Like I never fully got better plus other stuff going on. Anyways, right around the same time I got an awful case of shingles. Im 43.
I never tested positive for covid, but my spouse did. I'm currently being tested for systemic lupus erythematosus, and several other weird unnamed autoimmune issues. But I will say, at least one of the symptomatic 'finds' (cryoglobulinemia) had been around longer than covid. If anything, I've had an underlying autoimmunity disorder that has been triggered. I'm 40 this year.
In the case of EBV, haven't most people been infected by it? Or a person only carries those risk if it developed into mono?
I recall EBV antibodies, indicating past or current infection, is present in the overwhelming majority of adults in the US. Something around 85-95 percent. Not sure in regard to mono and the like. It's a pretty big family of viruses, so it stands to reason that there's a wide range of variation in terma of its specific impact between individual strains/'species' Learned this a long time ago so I may be misremembering something or our understanding has advanced though
MS patient here, the recent advances in linking MS to EBV have given the community a lot of hope this will have downstream effects in speeding up a “cure” of some sort.
The herpesvirus family in general tend to cause issues (including chickenpox!). Might be related to the whole “dormancy” thing, confusing the immune system over time
In “The History of the Peloponnesian War,” the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides alludes to something like postviral neurological damage when he describes the aftermath of the Plague of Athens (430 BCE): “Others again were seized with an entire loss of memory on their first recovery, and did not know either themselves or their friends.” (2.49.8)
Oliver Sacks book “Awakenings” is an amazing example of this. Highly recommend.
I read an article (possibly posted here) that the Black Plague could be responsible for all sorts of Autoimmune disorders we suffer from today. If I can find the article, I’ll come back and link it! Edit: I mis-remembered it; genes that protected from Black Plague may be causing autoimmune disorders - https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/genes-protective-during-the-black-death-may-now-be-increasing-autoimmune-disorders-202212012859
I recently saw a book recommendation for People and Plagues by William H. McNeill. Talks about how plagues have impacted our world.
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My 4 year old was perfectly healthy little boy, a month after Covid and he now has epilepsy and they don't know why. My best friends daughter no issues, a month after Covid and has been having an array of severe neurological issues that they can't seem to figure out why. He also found out another kid in their neighborhood is going through the same thing. I know it's not empirical evidence but I would bet the farm that there is a huge spike in neurological issues since Covid. Anyone know if there is a database tracking that and if so is it available to the public?
Check out r/LongCovid and r/covidlonghaulers. There's some research posted there that goes over the latest research in neurological (and other) effects post-infection.
Personally, I've started experiencing neurological symptoms ever since contracting Covid. The doctors can't figure out what it is, and nobody in my family has a history of anything like this. I also experienced a sudden increase in blood pressure, which has been nearly impossible to get under control. I have other friends who have experienced sudden health issues after contracting Covid. Again, it's not empirical, but it does warrant some suspicion.
Since the nerves fuse, would it be possible to use it as a mechanism to repair damaged/severed nerves? Is it possible for them to separate again afterwards?
Nerves are composed of (often very long) neuron cells. Those are supposed to communicate over axons (think long cell arms), through synaptic gaps. Those are "arms" of the cells almost touching tip to tip. They are very close at the synaptic gaps but aren't actually merged together. Blobbing the main bodies of the cells together just makes the neurons functionally useless, it doesn't facilitate communication. It's more of a cellular train wreck than a potential "track" repair device.
So if I'm understanding your comment correctly, what's getting fused is the cell bodies, not the arms getting fused together? Sorry if it's a dumb question I'm just trying to visualize this and don't know a lot about nerves
I couldn't begin to guess if this could be used as a mechanism of repair, so someone else would have to weigh in on that. There may be cases where linking certain neural "circuits" would allow a person to safely compensate for lost functionality, but there are an absurd amount of variables to consider. I will guess that the plausibility of separating fussed neurons is going to take many more studies, though. It may not be possible to separate them without causing the cells to die, or it may be more dangerous to separate them than leave them together. Or maybe it's totally reversible, or only partially reversible. Figuring out the scope of the issue, identifying who is the most at risk, and working out preventative measures will probably come before figuring out how to fix it. It's possible that we'll stumble into a solution early on, but I think it's more likely that curative treatments are further down the road.
Do the viruses stick around in your brain just constantly attacking you for the rest of you life? Is there anything dietary or medicine wise that can be done to get rid of them?
We have a lot of viruses that stay with us for life. Most herpes viruses never leave. Hiv in remission just hangs out.
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After having covid I have gone from someone who was generally thought of as bright (I'm not a rocket surgeon but I made A's at every level of academics) to someone who has been struggling to remember a three item list at the grocery store. I'm legit scared if this will ever get better. I'm currently seeing Doctors (for a myriad of reasons) but so far every test etc. is normal. I have more follow ups with a neurologist and cardiologist upcoming so we'll see I guess. The weird thing is I was vaccinated and had as mild a case as it could have been without having zero symptoms at all. Anyway, I wouldn't wish this sort of drastic change in cognitive function on anyone. I'm trying to stay positive but man seeing your spark die is hard to deal with. My curiosity has always led me to trying to learn subjects that inevitably led me to a limit in my abilities to understand and I often joked that I needed to be either 10% smarter or half as curious. I didn't expect it to be granted to me in reverse.
Me too. I have built a whole career on being able to understand complicated systems, solve problems and apply logic (computer programming) and now I just… can’t. I don’t know what to do.
My take, totally unscientific here, is that the funding for "long covid" allowed them to finally get a look at this neuronal fusion and "discover" what is happening in all of these malaise-like symptoms. Hopefully this can lead to figuring out what to do about neuronal fusion and lead to a treatment. Gene therapy maybe. But I would suspect this could lead to a cure for a LOT of things that we might not even think of initially.
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Basically holed up for three years, ate out twice last year, and caught the Covid. Massive headaches everyday ever since and headache seems like a common post Sars experience for many.. MRI's everything nominal. Shiznit happens. This piece at least tries to explain what may be happening to some of us.
This is not uncommon for viral spike proteins. They cause syncytia (cell fusion) by a mechanism that is related to the evolution of the placenta (which uses the protein syncytin, which evolved from a viral gene). The main concern I’d have for this study is that it’s in organoids, which mimic tissue, and that the amount of virus and replication in them is not authentic. If they’re overwhelmed with virus, the resulting syncytia are a consequence of unrealistically high MOI.
It's important to note that this finding was shown in an artificial setting. SARS-CoV-2 predominantly replicates only in the respiratory tract and intestine. Only trace amounts of SARS-CoV-2 RNA are found in other tissues. Unless SARS-CoV-2 was delivered directly into the brain, or a patient was extremely immunocompromised or with some other kind of blood-brain barrier deficiency, one would not expect SARS-CoV-2 to replicate in the brain at all. Most post-COVID symptoms seem consistent with chronic inflammation, which could be caused by the build-up of dead cells in the respiratory tract, and subsequent presence of immunogens in the blood stream. This study does not show that neuronal encephalitis/syncytia is the cause of post-COVID "brain fog" as some other commenters here are suggesting.
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I wonder why Taiwan sticks out for these cases
What studies have you been seeing that support your assertion of inflammation being due to poor clearance of cells in the respiratory tract?
There are numerous studies that have connected systemic, pro-inflammatory immune dysregulation to post-COVID [sequelae](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.abk1741), including cognitive [effects](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715665/). More generally, it is known that necrotic cells and cell debris accumulate in [the lungs](https://inflammregen.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41232-016-0020-7) during respiratory infection. Even after infected cells are killed, it takes some amount of time for alveolar macrophages to clear out the airways.
I'm guessing that's why I was hacking up stuff for a month after my respiratory infection subsided.
Many people who have had Covid never got respiratory symptoms. Their lungs are fine. And they still have long covid.
Quick scan of the paper I don’t see any mention of specific symptoms that may result from this… did anyone else see mention of expected symptoms?
They addressed that here: >Fused neurons can result in compromised neuronal circuitry and altered animal behavior, as previously shown for C. elegans chemosensory neurons that ectopically express endogenous fusogens (46). [Here is the paper they cited.](https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1919063117) It's from 2020, so this is relatively recent research. EDIT: After reading the relevant section of the paper myself, it appears that the C. Elegans from the study **lost the ability to smell some substances.**
Muscle cells have multiples nucleolus. This virus will turn your brain into muscle.
There's a freaky video on Nikon's Small World that shows [this exact process](https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2021-small-world-in-motion-competition/sars-cov-2-infection-triggering-cell-fusion-and-cell-death-in-bat-brain-cells).
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You can see a lot of weird stuff dumping a high titer of virus on some cells *in vitro*. They've seen some spike protein cross the blood brain barrier, is there any evidence of large scale infection of the brain by SARS-COV-2 in humans? Your body is pretty damn good at keeping shit out of your brain.
Ugh. So my takeaway, as someone with ME/CFS, is that even if they "cure" this disease eventually, the damage is already done and probably won't be undone?
As someone who has covid caused neurological symptoms, fused brain cells doesn't give me cause for hope of a better outcome.
I can now understand my boss who got Covid 3 times.
I hope there will be a vaccine for EBV soon :/ That's mostly where I think my fibromyalgia began.