Mastodawn

DisabledPumpkin Feb 3, 2024

This is a pretty incredible piece of work impacting #LongCovid future treatments that I just made my neuroscientist wife explain to me. Potentially a big finding and here's a good readable summary:

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/viral-protein-fragments-behind-serious-covid-19-outcomes

The virus persists but so do scientists <3

Viral protein fragments may unlock mystery behind serious COVID-19 outcomes

‘Zombie’ virus fragments continue to cause inflammation after the virus is destroyed

UCLA

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Cat Hicks Feb 3, 2024

Imagine coordinating across 24 departments/institutions and all these fields and all these technologies. And scientists do it all with an absolute fraction of the investment that we are putting into chat apps right now or whatever.

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Shannon Quinn

Feb 3, 2024

@grimalkina Holy cow 😮

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Chris Chambers 🍁Feb 3, 2024

@grimalkina Science is a calling. I’m grateful to those who’ve answered.

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Toni Aittoniemi Feb 3, 2024

@grimalkina ’We saw that the various forms of debris from the destroyed virus can reassemble into these biologically active ‘zombie’ complexes,” Wong said. “It is interesting that the human peptide being imitated by the viral fragments has been implicated in rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and lupus, and that different aspects of COVID-19 are reminiscent of these autoimmune conditions.” ’

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Graeme 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Feb 3, 2024

@grimalkina
Fascinating. Possibly this goes beyond covid, and helps us to understand other post viral syndromes, some of which are very debilitating or life threatening.

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Firehorseart Lives!Feb 3, 2024

@pa27 @grimalkina

I still hope that studying Long COVID will yield better support and treatment for ME-CFS.

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Cat Hicks Feb 3, 2024

@srfirehorseart @pa27 agreed and I think a lot of scientists hope that too. It has been a very very difficult thing to study (and extremely underfunded by our govts considering the disease burden of it, which directly controls who can study it and how)

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Cat Hicks Feb 3, 2024

@srfirehorseart @pa27 there is a lot of reason to start organizing research around mechanisms that may be shared across many diseases, which is frequently the aim of science like this, but still quite difficult to do when we face so many misconceptions in the wider world. This is a good example of why basic science -- ALWAYS under attack from rightwing politicians who rely on disinfo to say 'oh, this work on mice...this is irrrelevant to us...' -- is needed at a much higher level than we fund.

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