Craig Pearce: Hidden Blood Changes May Be Driving Long COVID Fatigue and Brain Fog
Craig Pearce, Director, Sales and Marketing at QCA Systems Ltd, shared on LinkedIn:
”A hidden physical change in the body may be helping to drive the prolonged malaise some people experience after contracting COVID-19.
Analyzing blood samples from patients with long COVID, a team of medical researchers has identified unusual microscopic structures that may contribute to symptoms such as brain fog and fatigue.
If this is the case, it offers a hopeful target for future treatment.
The reason why some people experience symptoms for months to years after a SARS-CoV-2 infection is still something of a medical mystery, but multiple mechanisms may be at play.
One possibility first raised by physiologist Resia Pretorius of Stellenbosch University in South Africa in 2021 is microclots.
These are tiny, abnormally persistent blood clots that are smaller than those seen in conditions such as stroke or thrombosis, yet large enough to hinder blood flow through capillaries.
Meanwhile, in 2022, Thierry and his colleagues showed that patients with long COVID have elevated levels of neutrophil extracellular traps, or NETs.
These are sticky webs of DNA and enzymes released by white blood cells to capture and contain pathogens invading the body.
Normally, NETs do their job and then quickly break down, but when they are released in large numbers or persist longer than needed, they can contribute to blood flow problems such as thrombosis and atherosclerosis.
The new research – a collaboration between Pretorius and Thierry – suggests that these two separate markers, NETs and microclots, may interact in the blood of long COVID patients.
Read more here.”
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