All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

The Week’s Best Cartoons 4/2

Y’know … some days even the political cartoons raise my hackles, but I must admit they are dead-on accurate and say as much at a glance as some of …

The Week’s Best Cartoons 4/2

Le Congrès brésilien accélère un projet de loi génocidaire sur le “paquet de la mort”, PL191, afin d’ouvrir les terres autochtones à l’exploitation …

Des peuples Indigènes marchent à Brasilia pour défendre leurs droits Lors d’une précédente attaque judiciaire contre les droits des peuples …

Le Congrès brésilien accélère un projet de loi génocidaire sur le “paquet de la mort”, PL191, afin d’ouvrir les terres autochtones à l’exploitation …

Prof Jeremy Nicholson: the link between Long Covid and heart disease | RNZ

When Covid-19 first emerged a little over two years ago, Nicholson’s first thought was to look at what was known about the most-similar existing disease, SARS-CoV-1, which caused the original Sars disease in the early 2000s.

He says of the roughly 1000 people who contracted that disease, 50 percent of those who survived were still suffering long-term effects 15 years on.

Covid-19, he says, appears to be behaving similarly.

“Other viral diseases can cause long-term effects … but Covid seems to be very good at doing it even when the disease is quite mild, and that’s what sets it apart.”

His team is working with multiple universities around the world – including Harvard and Cambridge – to try and understand the long term cardiometabolic and other systemic effects of Covid-19, as well as the impact of the disease in children.

Among their findings are a new set of biomarkers for increased risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with Covid-19 infections.

In fact, it was the discovery of these biomarkers that helped him to realise he had contracted Covid-19 himself.

Following a trip to Italy in February 2020, Nicholson believed the lingering fatigue he was experiencing upon his return to Australia was just jetlag.

When he continued to feel tired several weeks later he went to his GP and got “tested for everything”, though in early March 2020, no test for Covid-19 yet existed.

The tests revealed he had diabetes, some abnormal liver function and “a few other bits and pieces, but no infection of any sort that could be detected”.

It wasn’t until his team began building the diagnostic tests for Covid-19 biomarkers and he submitted to a test himself that he had any inkling he may have had the disease.

“My biochemistry was like [that of] a Covid patient and this was three or four months after I’d actually had the episode (of fatigue),” he says.

Subsequent antibody testing confirmed he had been exposed to Covid-19.

“We detected it in my own laboratory using our own tests and I wasn’t one of the controls, I was one of the patients!”

Nicholson’s experience gave him an early insight into the fact that people who contract Covid-19 could still be suffering biochemical abnormalities months after their initial infection with the disease.

Source: Prof Jeremy Nicholson: the link between Long Covid and heart disease | RNZ