Long COVID brain fog and muscle pain are associated with longer time to clearance of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from the upper respiratory tract during acute infection
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.18.23284742v1
RT @longcovidpapers & @shaneywright
Thanks for sharing that one! I've been thinking a lot about this one since yesterday:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/path.6035
Now, that's a bit different in that they're talking about still finding SARS-CoV-2 outside of the respiratory tract after people stop testing positive, but they're both related to the growing evidence that "getting over" COVID often does not seem to equate to clearing the virus from your body.
I've always been of the belief that there will be multiple causes of Long COVID in the end, but, the evidence for persistent viral presence is certainly compelling.
@BE Thank you for sharing this! Slight non sequitur: This jumped out at me: “Three of these patients remained PCR-negative for over 9 months”
😮
@BE I really want to give this more thorough due diligence tomorrow, I am agape at initial read
Not going to lie I read it. Slept on it. Read it again today and wondered what I was missing that I wasn't hearing everyone talking about it. If only studies like this got as much press as the ones that are (often wrongly) optimistic.
@BE I’m so glad I read this again. While not enormously surprising to anyone following Covid studies, it’s still unnerving to read stark statements about that third group who “apparently” recover but whose illnesses are basically still progressing and just die.
I think they're showing evidence where a persistent COVID infection, traveling the cardiovascular/endothelial system, is essentially in hiding as the patient won't test positive any longer. In older patients it probably often leads to death(I've heard anecdotally older patients die ~6 weeks "post infection" frequently) whereas in younger patients it leads to some of the "classic" long COVID symptoms that we know of.
@BE Agreed, & I also thought of these “sudden” cardiac deaths a few months post-Covid that are occurring now even in elementary school children. I also thought persistence in the tissues of those who considered themselves fully recovered, vs. those who knew themselves to be experiencing long Covid, was interesting.