This preprint (from April 5) is FASCINATING. Someone requested I have a look at it, and I'm glad they did, because it made SO MANY separate things suddenly make sense.
Here's a look at how a specific type of MICROCLOTS may be associated with LONG COVID pathology...
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This thread will have three things:
- Takeaways of this study
- Breakdown of the method they developed
- How these findings connect with other known patterns
This is a study that looks at some rugged little blood clots that come courtesy of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
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Some important background info:
- FIBRINOGEN is a protein that just kinda hangs out in the blood, waiting.
- FIBRIN is a fibrous protein that forms a mesh to hold platelets together to form a blood clot.
- THROMBIN is the enzyme that converts FIBRINOGEN into FIBRIN.
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If you add thrombin to blood plasma "from people with various chronic inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases," anomalous microclots can form that are "more resistant to breakdown than normal clots."
These can also be induced JUST by adding the spike protein to plasma.
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These microclots may impair oxygen exchange in various ways, which would lead to a cascade of issues, and it's a plausible explanation for why PEM occurs. If the virus directly enters pulmonary vasculature through the mouth, these spike protein clots could be a huge problem.
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In this study, they developed a new method to measure the microclot counts for individuals, then demonstrated "that as a cohort, samples from people with Long COVID have a higher mean microclot count compared to samples from control groups."
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What are the takeaways?
- Microclot counts are raised in the LC cohort compared to controls
- SARS-CoV-2 infection raises microclot counts, which "take several months to return to control levels."
- Microclots may be a biomarker to screen, or even a treatment target.
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What is the new method they devloped? It's a way to screen for microclots, and it specifically addresses a few potential issues with past studies.
In particular, the type of slidse typically used often have specks of reflective material about the size of the microclots!
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Critically, they also found that leaving the blood tubes sitting around for an hour before separating out the components affected the microclot count, as did repeated freeze-thaw cycles.
So, they designed a method that was quick and had as little handling as possible.
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In this method, they're able to keep the blood samples in little wells, rather than smearing them on a slide. An imaging module focuses at different depths to capture a multi-layered image, and the microclots are then automatically identified and counted.
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Importantly, they did repeat data collection and found that they got consistent results up to six hours after initial data collection, which means it can be done with an autosampler.
This method seems robust both for research and, potentially, diagnostics.
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What was found, specifically?
LC group has significantly higher clot counts compared to both uninfected controls and infected-but-no-LC controls.
Interestingly, there was ALSO significant difference in clot counts between the "recent COVID" group and other control groups.
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It's very notable that "only one [control] had a microclot count >50 while approximately half the LC group had counts above this level."
Also very interesting: there was a statistically significant difference in LC vs. control for microclot counts for women, but not men.
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The difference in immune response seen between men and women may pattern with what has been observed elsewhere (including a stronger innate immune response in men, but a more robust adaptive response in women).
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Very notably, the "Recent COVID samples have microclot counts comparable to" around the *top 25% of the LC group!*
"Together, these data indicate that exposure to SARS-CoV-2 initially increases the microclot count..., but these microclots are cleared over time."
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IMO, this finding is a really strong explanation as to why there seems to be an increased risk of cardiac incidents in the 3-6 months following a SARS-CoV-2 infection: The presence of the spike protein may be creating microclots throughout the cardiovascular system!
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How did the microclots relate to symptoms? Their questionnaire was basic, but they generally found the symptoms you'd expect being prominent in the LC group: fatigue, post-exertional malaise, difficulties concentrating, etc.
However, high microclots didn't GUARANTEE LC!
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So, do microclots cause LC? I mean, they probably don't *help*.
One possible explanation is that LC may reflect a persistent dysregulated state (e.g. a "pro-coagulable state"), and external intervention would be required to shift things back to normal.
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I think the "potential role of the spike protein in inducing amyloid formation and seeding microclots" is a FASCINATING possibility—especially given that there seems to be the possibility of a runaway process of consistent clotting.
(It may also explain vCJD!)
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The authors also note that, since this is a new line of research, we have no idea what role microclots may play in other conditions—but they're beginning by investigating whether pwME have similar microclot profiles to pwLC!
I'm also very curious how EBV impacts clotting!
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Of course, this isn't the only way that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has been shown to cause cardiac damage: It may also lead to fusion of uninfected cells!
Overall, the implications are significant. At the very least, I think this is a plausible explanation for why there are often cardiac issues *in the time period shortly after infection,* even if it doesn't explain LC!
That's not to say that it's impossible to use solid-state media for long-term storage. It's just that anything with durability guarantees gets prohibitively expensive quickly. Spinning hard drives—as well as DVDs and Blu-ray discs!—are your friend.
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- The way data is stored in solid-state media makes it much more susceptible to bit rot than other media.
- In a spinning hard drive, the moving parts are the most common point of failure.
- When you burn a DVD, that shit is fairly permanent.
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I wish people would understand that insurance underwriters have armies of actuaries calculating risks, and if an insurance company drops you, it's because things have changed in such a way that insuring you will take more out of the financial pool than you're putting in
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It sucks, but it's a direct result of the fact that humans are widely inhabiting locations that are rapidly becoming impossible to inhabit safely. If you can't find insurance for your home, it means there's a high likelihood you'll need to move soon anyway.
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You get insurance so that you can replace all of your stuff in the event of a disaster. When the insurance company effectively says "the risk of disaster is so high that insuring you would almost certainly cause us to lose a lot of money," it ALSO means your life is in danger
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So here’s the thing about some of the subtle neuro damage related to SARS-CoV-2 infection that I think a lot of people miss: some of the known deficits are correlated with things like impulsiveness and poor emotional control, so we might expect to see deficits there are well
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Consider how impatient people seem to be on the road in the last couple years relative to the 2010s, and I think we have a perfect example of where this is LIKELY already manifesting.
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This impact is particularly insidious for the person experiencing it, because poor impulse control, by definition, doesn’t really come on gradually. My biggest concern is how interactions under these circumstances will play out if this impact continues to become more common
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Let's review some major points in the Nukit controversy, since some people are unclear:
- Someone criticized someone's use of Nukit lanterns.
- Nukit attacked the critic because, as noted, this is how they market
- Nukit now demands "mediation" with the community (how??)
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So let's look at this a bit more critically. Here is the "evidence" Nukit provided that the didn't say anything racist. First of all, these aren't the comments in question, but it's worth a look anyway.
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Let's be clear about what happened here: Someone lamented the unequal access to protective measures and criticized someone who seems to be using a certain device to *maintain the status quo*, and the manufacturer of the device found it unacceptable.
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NEW STUDY! This exploratory study identifies a SPECIFIC PHENOTYPE OF LONG COVID that appears related to NEUROMUSCULAR DISTURBANCE rather than lung damage—and they've termed it Complex Ventilatory Dysfunction!
Breakdown of the paper (thread written for a general audience!)...
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Broadly speaking, there are two groups of acute covid outcomes involving dyspnea (shortness of breath) as a long-term symptom:
- Severe cases that may have physical lung damage
- "Mild" cases that now have ME/CFS-like features, but who have no evidence of lung damage!
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In this study, they explored this distinction further and identified a distinct subset of patients with a pattern of breathing abnormality that they have termed complex ventilatory dysfunction (CVD).
So how did they arrive at this conclusion? Let's dig in!
NEW STUDY! It VERY thoroughly supports the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 emerged as a zoonotic spillover event in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market—using multiple methods!
Breakdown of the paper (written for a general audience!)...
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This paper reanalyzes the same data from the April 2023 paper in Nature that cast doubt on the Huanan Market hypothesis (pictured).
In the new paper published in Cell this week, another group conducted far more detailed (and statistically sound) analyses!
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This new paper starts by reviewing the evidence supporting the Huanan Market hypothesis, and some of the details are FASCINATING!
To begin with, of the 174 COVID cases identified with an onset of December 2019, 32% had a link to the Huanan Market.