Long Covid blood test shows differences in the immune system, research finds

The research is among the first to prove that "long Covid is, in fact, a biological illness," said David Putrino, principal investigator of the new study and a professor of rehabilitation and human performance at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

This will need to be investigated with more research, but at least it's something because, quite frankly, right now we don't have any blood tests" either to diagnose long Covid or help doctors understand why it's occurring, he said.

ID: Person with long brown hair in white cowl neck white knit sweater holding coffee cup with Greek style design. Video is captioned.

New crucial information from David Putrino of the Putrino Laboratory, and the Mount Sinai long covid clinic. Leading expert, and facility on the front of this disease.

Take aways:

Vaccination as of 2024, according to this information does not prevent long covid.

I'd like to include other sources state vaccines reduce long covid by percentages, though no higher than 68.7%. It is important to also factor the dwindling and low rates of vaccination as of 2024 (17%), and highly mutagenic, immune evasive and contagious nature of SARS-CoV-2.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(23)00414-9

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-people-booster-percent-pop5, (completed primary series + updated bivalent booster)

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-variants-bar?time=earliest

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-023-00878-2 "Like most RNA viruses, coronaviruses evolve rapidly"

The point being, while it is encouraged to get vaccinated, vaccination alone is not sufficient to robustly protect individuals or the general population from infection or development of virus associated disease/long covid.

Literature and resources on the full inventory of mitigation methods, please read my pinned post or search for the December 2023 update.

Many long covid sufferers, especially now, have multiple vaccinations, are median age 38, had mild feeling or even asymptomatic infection and were not hospitalized.

Note: mild infection does not mean harmless, and segments and statements from Mount Sinai and Dr. David Putrino illustrate why.

Furthermore, while it is my personal opinion mild and asymptomatic infection is quite likely a sign of immune evasion, there is some other evidence and real world examples that may support my hypothesis. - Admin/mod

You can listen to the whole interview here: https://www.bayarealyme.org/blog/long-covid-what-we-have-learned-about-chronic-illness-from-the-front-lines/

(Please share widely on and off Tumblr)

From Putrino Lab @PutrinoLab today:

A reminder that if you live within 50 miles of NYC and you have a PRE-2020 ME/CFS diagnosis, then @VirusesImmunity

and I NEED your help! If you have difficulty traveling we will come to you. Please help us to hit our recruitment goals if you can! ---

Prof. Akiko Iwasaki is involved in this research. She just quoted this on Twitter/X saying: Please help spread the word about our #MECFS study with @PutrinoLab 👇🏼 thank you 🙏🏼

---

Post-Viral Trials News @postviraltrials quote tweeted it saying: David is underselling the benefits of participating – they give you microclot and platelet imaging and impressions! Here are mine:

https://x.com/postviraltrials/status/1774908103307198667?s=20

This week we want to have a conversation about what accessibility can bring to the competitive video game space. We'll be joined by Jose Hernandez of The Quad Gods to speak on accessibility, competitive play, and eSports. See you this Thursday!

Health

Prosthetic innovation: 'It's like you have a hand again'       NEW YORK

Today's artificial limbs can look very natural, and now an innovative process makes prosthetic hands move more naturally as well.

In an innovative experiment, scientists have shown that the nerves in patients' arms can be trained to control the movements of prosthetic fingers and thumbs.

"This is the biggest advance in motor control for people with amputations in many years," said Paul Cederna, a professor of plastic surgery and biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan.

A challenge to powering prosthetics has been the minute signals put out by an amputee's nerves. Cederna's team boosted the signal by wrapping tiny bits of muscle around nerve endings, according to their study published in Science Translational Medicine.

As the nerves grow into the muscle, the person's thoughts can create a muscle twitch that produces a signal big enough to be picked up by tiny wires connected to a nearby computer, which tells the prosthetic hand to move.

"Our ultimate goal is to have prosthetic limbs that the person views as a part of their body," Cederna said.

In an example of how well the system works, a woman who was nervously tapping her own fingers prompted the prosthetic to tap right along with it, Cederna said. "It was just doing what the other hand was doing, like it was a part of her," he noted.

"This worked the very first time we tried it. There's no learning for the participants. All of the learning happens in our algorithms. That's different from other approaches."

The procedure also worked for another amputee in the study who had lost not only his hand, but also part of his arm.

"It's the coolest part of what they've shown," said Lee Fisher, an assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh's department of physical medicine and rehabilitation and bioengineering.

Participants were able to pick up blocks with a pincer grasp, move their thumb in a continuous motion, lift spherical objects, and even play in a version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, according to the study.

The approach is an "exciting innovation," but no one can predict when it will be marketable, said David Putrino, co-director of the abilities research center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. "Currently it takes 17 years to get something (from the lab) out into clinical practice," he said.

Don’t miss the interactive workshops at Disrupt SF 2018

Techcrunch’s super-sized Disrupt San Francisco 2018 — the only Disrupt event in North America this year — takes place September 5-7. We’re not kidding when we say brace yourself for three unprecedented, program-packed days. In addition to Startup Battlefield — with a special $100,000 prize — the Virtual Hackathon, Startup Alley and a battalion of headlining speakers, we’ve recruited leading tech and investment movers and shakers to share their wisdom in the form of interactive workshops.

You won’t want to miss out, so be sure to save time in what will no doubt be a very busy and rewarding Disrupt schedule. Here’s just a taste of our workshop offerings from organizations like NASA, All Raise, Red Bull, SONM, TomTom, Constellation Labs and more:

Bleeding-Edge IT Trends Explained: Igor Lebedev, industry expert and CTO of SONM, explains what’s behind the concepts of blockchain, distributing computing and other hot IT trends.

Beyond the ICO — New approaches to fundraising and VC’s role in crypto: After emerging from an extraordinary period of fundraising and subsequent growth, Constellation Lab’s COO Ben Jorgensen and his team will share their experiences in an interactive session that explores the complex and ever-changing fundraising models available and how venture capital approaches cryptocurrency.

Hacking Human Performance: Join Dr. David Putrino, Red Bull’s High-Performance Center consultant and Mt. Sinai director of rehabilitation innovation, as he explores the use of evidence-based technologies to maximize high performance and human potential.

All Raise Roundtables & AMA: Join All Raise and women founders in interactive discussions on major challenges that female founders face — such as fundraising, recruiting strategies, company culture, sales and marketing strategies, board/investor management, M&A and more. Afterward, at the AMA, participants will have a chance to ask the top women in venture questions about whatever is top of mind. Open to all women founders.

The Nuts and Bolts of Location-Aware Applications: Gregory De Jans, head of Developer Relations at TomTom, offers a deep dive into the use of TomTom Maps APIs for developers looking to leverage the power of location insights. Learn about APIs for map display, search, routing, traffic and map SDKs.

Bringing NASA Technology Down to Earth: Whether you want to start a company, improve your existing products or develop new ones, NASA may be the source of your technology solutions. Join Dan Lockney, the agency’s technology transfer program executive, as he explains how NASA works with companies to develop new products and services.

More Just Music: Bose has been innovating in audio for 50 years, from creating tiny speakers with room-filling sound to noise-canceling headphones. Come hear about the latest innovations in audio and their new venture fund from members of the Bose team.

The Current State of Location Services: What progress has been made in the pursuit of an autonomous world? How have recent changes to provider price plans impacted the industry? Why is this the optimal time for developers to embrace location services? Discover why the question of ‘where’ is more relevant than ever before. HERE Technologies chats geocoding, routing, and positioning to build location-aware features.

Disrupt San Francisco 2018 takes place September 5-7. Whether you want to learn, network, compete, exhibit or launch your startup to the world, Disrupt SF 2018 is where it all happens. Still need tickets? Buy your passes right here. We can’t wait to see you there!

Putrino Lab (@PutrinoLab)

@Zappos you guys rock!

faved by your 1 friend

Techcrunch’s super-sized Disrupt San Francisco 2018 — the only Disrupt event in North America this year — takes place September 5-7. We’re not kidding when we say brace yourself for three unprecedented, program-packed days. In addition to Startup Battlefield — with a special $100,000 prize — the Virtual Hackathon, Startup Alley and a battalion of headlining speakers, we’ve recruited leading tech and investment movers and shakers to share their wisdom in the form of interactive workshops.

You won’t want to miss out, so be sure to save time in what will no doubt be a very busy and rewarding Disrupt schedule. Here’s just a taste of our workshop offerings from organizations like NASA, All Raise, Red Bull, SONM, TomTom, Constellation Labs and more:

Bleeding-Edge IT Trends Explained: Igor Lebedev, industry expert and CTO of SONM, explains what’s behind the concepts of blockchain, distributing computing and other hot IT trends.

Beyond the ICO — New approaches to fundraising and VC’s role in crypto: After emerging from an extraordinary period of fundraising and subsequent growth, Constellation Lab’s COO Ben Jorgensen and his team will share their experiences in an interactive session that explores the complex and ever-changing fundraising models available and how venture capital approaches cryptocurrency.

Hacking Human Performance: Join Dr. David Putrino, Red Bull’s High-Performance Center consultant and Mt. Sinai director of rehabilitation innovation, as he explores the use of evidence-based technologies to maximize high performance and human potential.

All Raise Roundtables & AMA: Join All Raise and women founders in interactive discussions on major challenges that female founders face — such as fundraising, recruiting strategies, company culture, sales and marketing strategies, board/investor management, M&A and more. Afterward, at the AMA, participants will have a chance to ask the top women in venture questions about whatever is top of mind. Open to all women founders.

The Nuts and Bolts of Location-Aware Applications: Gregory De Jans, head of Developer Relations at TomTom, offers a deep dive into the use of TomTom Maps APIs for developers looking to leverage the power of location insights. Learn about APIs for map display, search, routing, traffic and map SDKs.

Bringing NASA Technology Down to Earth: Whether you want to start a company, improve your existing products or develop new ones, NASA may be the source of your technology solutions. Join Dan Lockney, the agency’s technology transfer program executive, as he explains how NASA works with companies to develop new products and services.

More Just Music: Bose has been innovating in audio for 50 years, from creating tiny speakers with room-filling sound to noise-canceling headphones. Come hear about the latest innovations in audio and their new venture fund from members of the Bose team.

The Current State of Location Services: What progress has been made in the pursuit of an autonomous world? How have recent changes to provider price plans impacted the industry? Why is this the optimal time for developers to embrace location services? Discover why the question of ‘where’ is more relevant than ever before. HERE Technologies chats geocoding, routing, and positioning to build location-aware features.

Disrupt San Francisco 2018 takes place September 5-7. Whether you want to learn, network, compete, exhibit or launch your startup to the world, Disrupt SF 2018 is where it all happens. Still need tickets? Buy your passes right here. We can’t wait to see you there!

via TechCrunch

Don’t miss the interactive workshops at Disrupt SF 2018

Techcrunch’s super-sized Disrupt San Francisco 2018 — the only Disrupt event in North America this year — takes place September 5-7. We’re not kidding when we say brace yourself for three unprecedented, program-packed days. In addition to Startup Battlefield — with a special $100,000 prize — the Virtual Hackathon, Startup Alley and a battalion of headlining speakers, we’ve recruited leading tech and investment movers and shakers to share their wisdom in the form of interactive workshops.

You won’t want to miss out, so be sure to save time in what will no doubt be a very busy and rewarding Disrupt schedule. Here’s just a taste of our workshop offerings from organizations like NASA, All Raise, Red Bull, SONM, TomTom, Constellation Labs and more:

Bleeding-Edge IT Trends Explained: Igor Lebedev, industry expert and CTO of SONM, explains what’s behind the concepts of blockchain, distributing computing and other hot IT trends.

Beyond the ICO — New approaches to fundraising and VC’s role in crypto: After emerging from an extraordinary period of fundraising and subsequent growth, Constellation Lab’s COO Ben Jorgensen and his team will share their experiences in an interactive session that explores the complex and ever-changing fundraising models available and how venture capital approaches cryptocurrency.

Hacking Human Performance: Join Dr. David Putrino, Red Bull’s High-Performance Center consultant and Mt. Sinai director of rehabilitation innovation, as he explores the use of evidence-based technologies to maximize high performance and human potential.

All Raise Roundtables & AMA: Join All Raise and women founders in interactive discussions on major challenges that female founders face — such as fundraising, recruiting strategies, company culture, sales and marketing strategies, board/investor management, M&A and more. Afterward, at the AMA, participants will have a chance to ask the top women in venture questions about whatever is top of mind. Open to all women founders.

The Nuts and Bolts of Location-Aware Applications: Gregory De Jans, head of Developer Relations at TomTom, offers a deep dive into the use of TomTom Maps APIs for developers looking to leverage the power of location insights. Learn about APIs for map display, search, routing, traffic and map SDKs.

Bringing NASA Technology Down to Earth: Whether you want to start a company, improve your existing products or develop new ones, NASA may be the source of your technology solutions. Join Dan Lockney, the agency’s technology transfer program executive, as he explains how NASA works with companies to develop new products and services.

More Just Music: Bose has been innovating in audio for 50 years, from creating tiny speakers with room-filling sound to noise-canceling headphones. Come hear about the latest innovations in audio and their new venture fund from members of the Bose team.

The Current State of Location Services: What progress has been made in the pursuit of an autonomous world? How have recent changes to provider price plans impacted the industry? Why is this the optimal time for developers to embrace location services? Discover why the question of ‘where’ is more relevant than ever before. HERE Technologies chats geocoding, routing, and positioning to build location-aware features.

Disrupt San Francisco 2018 takes place September 5-7. Whether you want to learn, network, compete, exhibit or launch your startup to the world, Disrupt SF 2018 is where it all happens. Still need tickets? Buy your passes right here. We can’t wait to see you there!

Via Emma Comeau https://techcrunch.com

Long COVID Recovery Remains Rare | Time

An important article that, among other things, covers why different studies come to slightly different conclusions about how many people recover from Long COVID:

How can multiple studies on the same topic reach such different conclusions? The way they’re designed can make a difference, Putrino says. Some Long COVID research uses data drawn from patients’ health records. In these studies, Putrino says, researchers sometimes assume symptoms have resolved if someone stops coming in for care. But there are lots of other reasons someone might stop seeing their doctor: financial constraints, frustration that treatments aren’t working, health declining to the point that leaving home becomes difficult, and so on. “Recovery” can also be defined differently. Is it a complete resolution of symptoms, or improving enough that someone can function despite their ill health? Once researchers start splitting those hairs, Al-Aly says, they often find that someone “didn’t really recover; they adjusted to a new baseline.”

...

As of now, there is no one-size-fits-all treatment for Long COVID, nor any treatment guaranteed to work at all. Each time a new patient enters their clinic, Putrino and his team start from the ground up, doing a comprehensive analysis of the individual's health in hopes of finding a problem that may respond to drugs, supplements, nerve stimulation, or other tools.

The people who come to our clinic are typically reaching a point with their symptoms where they're no longer able to mask what they're experiencing. I think many Americans right now are still feeling unwell, months out from their acute COVID infection, but they're still able to function. And that they're trying to put it to the back of their mind and and get on with their daily life.

"And unfortunately, what we're learning is that is the wrong approach. This is a progressive illness that slowly worsens over time, especially if you try to push through the symptoms you're experiencing. And so we typically see patients as they reach that point of realization that this is not going away.

The average medical history is typically unremarkable. So previously fit and healthy, no noticeable co-morbidities like chronic lung disease or chronic heart disease. These are people that used to run marathons and and be able to take on a very busy day, are suddenly coming to us.

"And at the point that they reach us, most of them have had to make accommodations in their work, either switching over to part time or in fact becoming unemployed as a result of their symptoms. They're experiencing cognitive impairment that we would expect to see in individuals with a traumatic brain injury or a stroke, not a previously fit and healthy 40-something year old who has just experienced an acute COVID infection.

[This] is a whole subset of symptoms that worsen whenever someone with long COVID tries to do either physical work, like climbing up a flight of stairs with their groceries or cognitive work, like sitting in front of a computer and trying to get through a day of of remote work. The burden of these symptoms is astounding."

...this illness is devastating. It impairs the ability to function physically and cognitively. And if you try to push through, sometimes things get worse and worse.

...understanding the different endotypes, and understanding also that someone with long COVID could have two or three of those endotypes is very, very important for the next steps of clinical trials that will attempt to treat long COVID."

(via Do vaccines protect against long COVID? What the data say)

Vaccines reduce the risk of developing COVID-19 — but studies disagree on their protective effect against long COVID.                            

from November 2021, Nature — Before we had Omicron variants to deal with.

Vaccines reduce the risk of long COVID by lowering the chances of contracting COVID-19 in the first place. But for those who do experience a breakthrough infection, studies suggest that vaccination might only halve the risk of long COVID — or have no effect on it at all. ... Although vaccines greatly reduce the rates of serious illness and death caused by COVID-19, they are not as effective at completely preventing the disease, and long COVID can arise even after a mild or asymptomatic coronavirus infection. ... For some individuals, long-COVID symptoms are mild; for others, they are life-changing. Nearly one-third of the people with long COVID at Putrino’s clinic have severe cognitive difficulties that can affect their ability to concentrate, speak and remember, and which were not present before their illness. About 60% of Putrino’s patients have had to change jobs or stop working as a result of their illness. “If you’re young and healthy, death from COVID may be highly unlikely,” Putrino says. “But severe debilitation is not.” ... One of the largest studies so far has gathered data from 1.2 million people who received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine ... found that a full two-dose regimen of vaccination reduced the risk of long COVID ... by about half among those who had breakthrough infections. ...

Read on

Putrino Lab (@PutrinoLab)

Massive thanks to this initiative from @Zappos. Tried it out yesterday...we had need for our clinical program and they delivered. Love it! #COVID19 #gratitude http://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUrjqodUcAEY-SH.jpg

faved by your 1 friend and 1 other