Doctors Find 'Antibody Signature' for Patients Most at Risk of Developing Long Covid (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0158065173
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/01/26/2035256/doctors-find-antibody-signature-for-patients-most-at-risk-of-developing-long-covid
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/25/doctors-find-antibody-signature-long-covid
> Researchers at University hospital Zurich analysed blood from Covid patients and found that low levels of certain antibodies were more common in those who developed long Covid than in patients who swiftly recovered. When combined with the patient's age, details of their Covid symptoms and whether or not they had asthma, the antibody signature allowed doctors to predict whether people had a moderate, high or very high risk of developing long-term illness. "Overall, we think that our findings and identification of an immunoglobulin signature will help early identification of patients that are at increased risk of developing long Covid, which in turn will facilitate research, understanding and ultimately targeted treatments for long Covid," said Onur Boyman, a professor of immunology who led the research. The team studied 175 people who tested positive for Covid and 40 healthy volunteers who acted as a control group. To see how their symptoms changed over time, doctors followed 134 of the Covid patients for up to a year after their initial infection. When Covid strikes, IgM antibodies ramp up rapidly, while IgG antibodies rise later and provide longer-term protection. Blood tests on the participants showed that those who developed long Covid -- also known as post-acute Covid-19 syndrome (Pacs) -- tended to have low levels of IgM and the antibody IgG3.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/25/doctors-find-antibody-signature-long-covid
This sounds like prions at work. (Score:2)
Could be a similar mechanism to JKD, I think . . . even with the pathogen eliminated, malformed/misfolded protein forms may now be present and persistent in the bloodstream (self-replicating on contact with healthy proteins?).
In good news, I hear that they'll stop holding my being stationed in Europe in the '80s against me. I guess my blood's not composed of some kind of molecular acid, after all.
Re: (Score:2)
From what I understand it is inflammatory response proteins bound up in microscopic blood clots. So the body can't break them down and get rid of them, and they circulate throughout the body causing systemic inflammation.
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*Low* levels were associated with long term illness. It suggests either the long COVID patients mounted a response that was different, maybe not as robust or slower, allowing the virus to do more damage.
Not an issue for Omicron (Score:1)
It is being widely reported that the Omicron variant is mostly asymptomatic, and even when there are symptoms it's essentially a cold or worst case flu-like. The people with long-COVID are going to be the people that were infected with the original strain or with Delta, both of which have now been displaced by the milder Omicron variant and people are rapidly gaining immunity through infection as this variant spreads approximately 5x more easily than Delta did, while being much less virulent.
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This is confused. Omicron more mild compared to Delta. It is about as deadly and dangerous as the Alpha strain.
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JoshuaZ stated:
> This is confused. Omicron more mild compared to Delta. It is about as deadly and dangerous as the Alpha strain.
That's like saying cobra venom is more mild compared to black mamba venom - and the alpha variant killed millions before the advent of the delta and omicron waves.
My wife and I are both triple-vaxxed (all moderna) against Covid-19. She nonetheless got infected by what I have to assume was the omicron variant (she works in retail). I got it too, of course. Our symptoms consisted mainly of 5 days of continuously-running noses, occasionally spurred to a sprint by sneezing fits. No lung involveme
Epstein-Barr virus and long covid. (Score:2)
> We found that 66.7% (20/30) of long COVID subjects versus 10% (2/20) of control subjects in our primary study group were positive for EBV reactivation based on positive titers for EBV early antigen-diffuse (EA-D) IgG or EBV viral capsid antigen (VCA) IgM.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8233978/
Epstein-Barr a.k.a. 'mono" sounds like a nasty little shit and a prime target for vaccine research. Here's two more recent studies:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/epstein-barr-virus-multiple-sclerosis.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22693505/
is 175 a large enough sampling? (Score:2)
"When combined with the patient's age, details of their Covid symptoms and whether or not they had asthma, the antibody signature allowed doctors to predict whether people had a moderate, high or very high risk of developing long-term illness."
Weight/BMI and other potential comorbidities?
Signature not required (Score:1)
If they’re wearing a MAGA hat, cargo shorts, look 50lbs overweight, and sucking on a vape pen, they will probably catch Covid.
Lies, damn lies and statistics (Score:2)
"When combined with the patient's age, details of their Covid symptoms and whether or not they had asthma, the antibody signature allowed doctors to predict whether people had a moderate, high or very high risk of developing long-term illness." What does that mean? This sounds like a data mining operation rather than science.
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This is all a hoax.
This will all disappear this summer, just like last summer.
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> This is all a hoax.
> This will all disappear this summer, just like last summer.
Yup, covid will go away. Just like [1]the con artist told us it would [factcheck.org]. No vaccine needed, either. Which is why he used taxpayer dollars to race ahead with vaccine development then not tell people to get vaccinated while he did so in the dead of the night.
[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trump-baselessly-claims-coronavirus-will-go-away-without-vaccine/
Re:Hey don't forget (Score:5, Insightful)
Natural immunity exists. It is unpredictable how long it lasts. But more to the point, natural immunity requires you to undergo an infection with all of the accompanying risks to yourself and those around you. Relevant xkcd [1]https://xkcd.com/2557/ [xkcd.com].
[1] https://xkcd.com/2557/
Re: (Score:2)
They're finally starting to admit [1]exercise [nationalreview.com], [2]diet [arstechnica.com], and even [3]weight loss [cnn.com] help, probably because [4]omicron isn't being blocked much [imperial.ac.uk] by vaccine-immunity.
[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/regular-exercise-can-help-reduce-the-severity-of-covid/
[2] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/even-before-covid-americans-were-failing-at-health-basics-diet-exercise/
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/03/health/covid-weight-loss-wellness/index.html
[4] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232698/omicron-largely-evades-immunity-from-past/