2023-06-26 08:49:00
Blood thinners: The common drug aspirin can help with Long Covid.
Three years after the first long-Covid cases appeared, we now know quite a bit more about the mysterious, chronic disease. There are also effective drugs and a possible marker in the blood for the diagnosis – but no cure yet. The overview.
Not everyone who has Long Covid also has Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue, or ME/CFS for short. But if symptoms persist a year after infection and worsen over days or weeks after exertion or too much stimulus, then there’s a good chance the same mechanism is at work.
There is still no marker in the blood that would allow for a simple diagnosis. But researchers in Australia recently found such an indication in the blood: the so-called circRNAs. These are already known as possible markers in neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. In ME/CFS patients, these circRNAs were higher than in healthy individuals – 14 of these circRNAs were not found in healthy individuals. According to the researchers, five of them could be used as biomarkers in the blood.
Whether this is always the case with Long Covid has not been investigated. It is clear that both ME/CFS and long-Covid patients often have a blood clotting disorder: After the infection, microscopic clumps form and this leads to poorer blood circulation and a poorer supply of oxygen. In addition, the cell wall, the endothelium, is damaged.
In a new study, US researchers therefore describe Long Covid as a vascular disease caused by the spike protein. Two British researchers, Harriet Carroll and Robin Kerr, proposed renaming this common type of long covid “spike protein-induced thrombic vasculitis, SITV.”
They described a case where a patient was cured with three different blood thinners. These included aspirin and the antidepressant sertraline, which not only has an anti-inflammatory effect but also binds to the spike protein unit S1 and helps prevent clumping. Another method that seems to help some patients, at least temporarily, is a very expensive, multiple blood wash, in which such clumps are filtered out.
Sarah B., however, helped antihistamines. These dampen the cytokine storm, i.e. the excessive inflammatory reaction by the mast cells (a type of white blood cell) after an infection with Sars-Cov-2. Antihistamines are also used in acutely ill Covid 19 patients.
If, on the other hand, the cause of Long Covid is a derailed immune system, as is also suspected in ME/CFS, other therapies are probably needed: Protazy Reymer assumes that the immune system in ME/CFS is permanently boosted. The production of energy in the cells (in the mitochondria) also seems to be disturbed. In addition, the immune reaction can wrongly be directed against one’s own cells. This is how autoantibodies are formed. The Berlin Cures company hopes to be able to neutralize certain autoantibodies with its drug BC 007 and thus cure the disease. But the study, with around a hundred participants, has only just started.
Postural tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which is not uncommon in long Covid, could also be related to autoantibodies. Patients do not tolerate standing up, and the heart rate after standing up is over 120 beats per minute, normally the rate should remain below 100 beats per minute while standing.
A malfunction of the autonomic nervous system can also occur with POTS and Long Covid. The President of Long Covid Switzerland, Chantal Britt, helps beta blockers against the excessive heart rate.
Even if doctors cannot yet say for sure whether Long Covid is present in each case: Dogs can apparently identify Long Covid based on sweat samples. This study and many others are contained in a scientific article that was published by “Nature” at the beginning of the year by a team led by US doctor Eric Topol and summarizes all previous findings on Long Covid.
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