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posted by martyb on Monday August 03 2020, @04:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the quantify-*this*-in-dollars dept.

COVID-19 long-term effects: People report ongoing fatigue, brain fog and breathlessness, so what's happening in the body?:

As with many aspects of the new coronavirus, researchers are trying to pull together data to understand the medium-term health effects more fully.

[...] Its impact on the heart still isn't clear, Dr Gallo says, but studies published in recent weeks describe abnormalities in the hearts of patients who have completely cleared the virus.

"[The researchers] asked them about their just general wellbeing and a lot of the patients are commenting on just being generally exhausted and having shortness of breath, some of them having palpitations, atypical chest pain," she says.

What's more, many of these patients weren't that sick with COVID-19 — most of them had managed their illness at home, rather than needing hospital treatment.

[...] Other persistent symptoms people report have to do with the brain: "brain fog", sleeplessness and headaches.'

[...]Fatigue, which is more than just a feeling of tiredness, and can be associated with things like a "foggy" brain, slowed reflexes and headaches, is usually a useful response to infections.

"There's a good reason for that — mounting an immune response to fight an infection takes a huge amount of energy," Dr Landowski says.

"The body wants you to do as little as possible, so you can conserve energy and divert it to the immune system.

Then, once the infection is eliminated, the fatigue dissipates.

"However, in some people, the switch that returns the body back to normal seems to fail, resulting in chronic fatigue."

[...] "Regardless of which cells it's infecting, if it's infecting cells in the brain, it could be causing damage, which could have long-term consequences," Dr Lawson said.

Even if the virus doesn't infect brain cells directly, inflammation caused by the virus could also cause damage to the brain.

Some experts are concerned the medium-term effects on the brain might have consequences that reach further.

In an article in the Journal of Alzheimers Disease Reports, experts raise the question of whether people who've had COVID-19, particularly those whose symptoms included loss of taste or smell, will be at greater risk of conditions including Alzheimer's disease after they recover.

The last-linked article from above (which is open-access), is excerpted here with links sprinkled on some of the unusual terms:

Some of the earliest neurologic findings were in those experiencing COVID-19-related anosmia and dysgeusia [2]. Important to this equation is that COVID-19 may prove to be a risk factor for future neurodegenerative disorders, beyond that which would be expected in the context of other comorbidities and genetic predispositions. Anosmia and the biological processes resulting in this symptom contribute to grey matter loss in cortical regions [3], which is similar to where pathognomonic amyloid plaques are often discovered [4]. Olfactory dysfunction has also been found to be associated with the graduation from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to AD, serving as a potential identifier for preclinical stages [5].

[...] It has become clear that many age-related conditions are found among those testing positive for COVID-19, though some of these are also related to lifestyle and family history. ... Systolic hypertension in midlife, rather than only late life, is associated with 18% and 25% increased risk of AD, respectively ... These cardiovascular risk factors are directly related to cerebrovascular consequences, such as hypoperfusion, a symptom strongly associated with MCI and AD [14]. Plasma exchange and albumin for AD patients with hypoperfusion, for example, has been shown to improve cognitive deficits and initiate cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) amyloid-β (Aβ)...

Journal Reference:
Jack C. Lennon. Neurologic and Immunologic Complications of COVID-19: Potential Long-Term Risk Factors for AlzheimerΓÇÖs Disease [open], Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Reports (DOI: 10.3233/ADR-200190)

Got it! The millennials surviving COVID-19 today may have higher chances of an early onset of dementia than the baby boomers of today.


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  • (Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @07:06AM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @07:06AM (#1030625)

    I have to agree with the poster below. There has been lack of proper study, and even outright obstruction by the FDA, FCC, and FBI of:

    1) Vitamin C
    2) Hyperbaric oxygen
    3) Vaccines in aged/comorbid animals or volunteers

    Yet recommendations without evidence for dangerous and extreme measures like:

    1) Putting patients on ventilators right away
    2) Lockdowns and mask wearing that reduces transmission of all sorts of things

    Have lead me to conclude the governments and health authorities of the "West" are just too corrupt or incompetent to continue deserving respect.

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  • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Monday August 03 2020, @07:46AM (1 child)

    by Subsentient (1111) on Monday August 03 2020, @07:46AM (#1030638) Homepage Journal

    Yes, because something you used to eat in gummy form when you were 6 is going to stave off a life threatening virus.

    --
    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @07:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @07:56AM (#1030643)

      It isn't going to stave off a virus. It is going to reduce the amount of oxidative damage that results from the vitamin C deficiency found in sick and injured people. Also, a few 250 mg gummy filled with 16x more glucose molecules (that competes with dehydroascorbate for transport into cells, where it is reduced back to ascorbate or else lost) is not going to be sufficient.

      https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11396616/ [nih.gov]

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Monday August 03 2020, @01:18PM (3 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Monday August 03 2020, @01:18PM (#1030708)

    1) Vitamin C

    Vitamin C is actually one of the most heavily-studied vitamins out there, mostly due to Linus Pauling's obsession with it. Unless you've got an innate vitamin C deficiency it basically does fuck-all for you unless you own stock in a vitamin-manufacturing company. In fact except for folate for pregnant women, provided you have a reasonable diet you don't need any supplements of any kind since you'll be getting everything you need from what you eat. At best they do nothing, at worst they have all sorts of nasty side-effects when you dose your body with way too much of fad-vitamin-du-jour than it's meant to take.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 03 2020, @02:15PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 03 2020, @02:15PM (#1030732) Journal

      1990, I was working at a paper mill construction site. The Porta-Potty guy said something about vitamins clogging up his pump one day. I questioned him about that. He says all those one-a-day vitamins end up in his porta-potties, and that sometimes they can cause problems for his pumping equipment. So, apparently, a lot of those vitamins are doing no one any good at all. Of course, those that pass through like that are doing no harm! It's just wasted money, when all is said and done.

      Of course, porta-pottying isn't science, so the vitamin manufacturers are still making money.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @02:54PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @02:54PM (#1030741)

      Did you even read what you are responding too. Sick and injured people need 10-1000x more to avoid deficiency.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @03:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @03:29PM (#1030756)

        *"responding to?"

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday August 03 2020, @01:37PM (3 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 03 2020, @01:37PM (#1030719) Journal

    There's also been a lack of study of the efficacy of sugar. Maybe people just aren't eating enough sugar.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @04:28PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @04:28PM (#1030777)

      Not sure what you mean? Blood sugar is routinely measured and controlled if it goes too low or high.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @04:39PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @04:39PM (#1030783)

        Yes but they're looking at the wrong type of sugar.

        • (Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday August 03 2020, @07:38PM

          by Opportunist (5545) on Monday August 03 2020, @07:38PM (#1030897)

          Oh please enlighten me, is there really a conspiracy bullshit I haven't heard of yet?

  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday August 03 2020, @01:51PM (2 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Monday August 03 2020, @01:51PM (#1030723)

    Yes but PLEASE be careful of excess oxygen / oxygen toxicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity [wikipedia.org] I'm quite sure that's what killed my poor dad last November. The nurses and techs were too determined to get is blood O2 saturation close to 100%. I protested but was rebuffed, and now forced to strongly consider legal lesson-teaching.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @03:26PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @03:26PM (#1030754)

      HBOT practitioners are actually most alert to the risks of oxygen toxicity. The standard of care for a covid patient who comes in after days of hypoxemia is to blast them with oxygen rather than gradually increase it. Surely the body has adapted to lower oxygen so the sudden increase can be harmful.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @04:42PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2020, @04:42PM (#1030785)

        I doubt it. Next you'll be telling us that climate modelers include known sources of warming in their models. What about the SUN!? Idioits.