I was going to guess it was the immune system. That an immune response was still being activated, like in lupus or IBS or whatever.
But what they found was damaged blood vessels in the brain.
I'm not sure if that is better or worse? Can they heal?
But what they found was damaged blood vessels in the brain.
I'm not sure if that is better or worse? Can they heal?
> "For the first time, we have been able to show that leaky blood vessels in the human brain, in tandem with a hyperactive immune system may be the key drivers of brain fog associated with Long COVID. ..." — Prof. Matthew Campbell, Professor in Genetics and Head of Genetics at Trinity, and Principal Investigator at FutureNeuro.
As for healing, I'd think blood vessels could! The article doesn't say whether it's an autoimmune problem, so I suspect the researchers are being conservative or don't know?
> "The concept that many other viral infections that lead to post-viral syndromes might drive blood vessel leakage in the brain is potentially game changing and is under active investigation by the team.” — also Prof. Campbell
[from the article -- BBB is Blood Brain Barrier]
"We have three on-going, major follow-up initiatives. First, we are assessing, in a temporal manner, whether symptom resolution in patients who had long COVID and brain fog is accompanied by the resolution of BBB disruption. Second, we are screening novel BBB regulators to specifically target and treat the BBB disruption observed. This is exciting as we do not need to develop therapeutics to cross the BBB per se, but rather only to stabilize the structure. Last, we are expanding our clinical research into examining BBB integrity in other post-viral illnesses in tandem with functional neurological disorders (those conditions with no current observable basis for them). It is our vision that targeted regulation of the BBB will change the landscape of how neurological disorders are treated in the future."
> Vascular disruption has been implicated in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pathogenesis and may predispose to the neurological sequelae associated with long COVID, yet it is unclear how blood–brain barrier (BBB) function is affected in these conditions.
https://health.ucsd.edu/news/press-releases/2021-08-31-what-...