- A new study in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases examines how COVID-19 impacts the immune system. Researchers used preexisting health records from over 40,000 people who had undergone testing of their lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell, and focused on comparing test results taken during China’s massive Omicron wave in winter 2022-23 to before and after this time period. But these were three different cohorts, not the same participants followed over time. Participants tested up to 20 months after the COVID-19 wave had lower levels of lymphocytes compared to pre-wave, and these findings were more pronounced in people with cardiovascular disease. While the paper’s authors state that their findings “support immune dysregulation” as a driver of Long COVID, the study did not follow people with documented Long COVID symptoms or confirmed SARS-Cov-2 infections, and did not account for the potential impacts of reinfections during the period it labels as “post-COVID.”
- Earlier this fall, we reported on the German government cutting Long COVID funding. Now, the government has announced just over €500 million ($582 million USD) in funding for infection-associated diseases, including Long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). In a program called a National Decade Against Post-Infectious Diseases, funds for research will be allocated over the next ten years (2026–2036) to study pathobiology, biomarkers, and more. In the U.S., advocates have demanded at least a billion USD per year, with some experts stating the field needs many billions per year. Researcher Ziyad Al-Aly told Nature, Germany’s funding is “a great step in the right direction.”
- A preprint using data from the DecodeME study found more than 250 genes associated with ME, 76 of which were shared with Long COVID. Researchers compared the genes of people with ME to those of controls and of a cohort with Long COVID, using a special AI analytics platform. “These findings provide further evidence that ME is a complex multisystemic condition where the risk of developing the disease has a very clear genetic and biological basis,” the authors concluded, explaining that although Long COVID and ME have overlapping genetic commonalities, their research suggests they are different diseases. Read more about the study in this press release, which calls it “the most detailed genetic analysis of ME ever conducted.”
