December 7, 2022: When Hannah Davis saw the first visual confirmation of a prolonged COVID in her blood, a firework of fluorescent green dots on a black background, she felt a great sense of relief. In early November, she became one of the first U. S. COVID patients. The U. S. population was tested for microscopic blood clots, catching up with South Africa, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other countries already experimenting with similar treatments.
“It’s validation,” says Davis, who enthusiastically shared photographs of his clots on Twitter. “This is necessarily the first COVID-specific verification that is promising and scientifically sound and integrates studies in other postviral diseases. “
Davis donated his blood to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, along with some other founding members of the Patient-Led Research Collaboration, all of whom had become inflamed in the first wave of the pandemic and are still in health issues about 3 years ago. Later. Seeing images of her blood clots, Davis and her companions cried what she called tears of joy. Then the truth of having those infamous blood clots came.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency room doctors and others treating patients noticed that the sickest people generated excessive blood clots. Clots clogged kidney dialysis machines, causing strokes, and killing patients much later For a long time, COVID researchers have suspected that smaller, less apparent blood clots could be causing many of the confusing patient-reported symptoms that have lasting effects of the virus.
The theory is that those strange, persistent clots, called microclots, can simply block the body’s sensitive blood vessels and prevent oxygen from going where it wants to go, causing everything from shortness of breath and organ damage to mental confusion and debilitating fatigue. . . But if all the havoc is inside those little clots, normal pathology tests probably wouldn’t run into that. A network of specialists has now been set up to see if specialist tests can be accessed and if clots can be treated.
Clots are complicated
Blood clotting is a vital and elaborate procedure that prevents excessive bleeding. Normally, the frame dissolves blood clots on its own, but under certain conditions, such as chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME/CFS), diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and acute long-term COVID, researchers have found that damage to blood vessel walls caused by inflammation can lead to abnormal proteins and platelet activity. Blood vessels: to carry enough oxygen to the tissues of the frame.
Strands of network-like protein called fibrin are an essential component of clots. Viewed under an electron microscope, “they look like a plate of spaghetti that you just emptied into a strainer,” says Douglas Kell, PhD, systems biologist. The rare “amyloid,” like the protein editing seen in microclots, on the other hand, is seen as “a disgusting mess you’ve bled. It’s all stuck,” Kell says.
These misfolded clots are heavily colored with a special dye that glows bright green so they can be seen under a microscope, and take longer to break down than general clots through an herbal procedure called fibrinolysis.
This problematic clotting can persist in the blood for months or years after infection, according to studies by Kell and physiologist Etheresia Pretorius, PhD, of Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Kell and Pretorius had been reading coagulation for years before the pandemic. They also led the first team to notice those microclots in the blood of other people with acute or prolonged COVID and has since written a series of papers on the subject.
There are a number of theories about the reasons for long-term COVID, from reservoirs and viral waste to immune responses and overactive antibodies, but by tackling the disease with a “systems biology mindset,” they are feeding off each other, Pretorius says.
Microclots in prolonged COVID are being studied around the world through researchers and clinicians who refer to themselves as #TeamClots on Twitter and hope this theory represents an important new target for understanding and treating prolonged COVID and related disorders. Bring these studies into clinical practice.
In November, Pretorius traveled to the United States to study his identity techniques and assemble the team.
However, it is not fully understood why microclots occur after COVID-19 in the first position. Pretorius and Kell, the spike protein of the virus may be the cause in other people with COVID for a long time. This possible cause was supported through a recent Harvard Medical School study that detected the SARS-CoV-2 peak antigen in long-term COVID patients up to 12 months after diagnosis, suggesting the presence of an active and persistent viral reservoir in the setting after infection.
“A central question is: Are those microclots a root cause or are they a reaction to anything else that’s going on?” says Michael VanElzakker, PhD, a longtime neuroscientist and COVID researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and co-founder of the PolyBio Research Foundation, which focuses on reading the viral reservoir. “If the clots are residual remnants of acute COVID, that would be a fairy tale. But if they form in reaction to a spike protein escaping from a reservoir. . . Then it would be another story because you can remove clots all day, but they would just be remodeled.
Treatment of microclots
There are a number of early experimental remedies for those COVID-related microclots that have yet to be tested in trials.
Among them, a small but promising pre-print study by Pretorius and Kell shows that a combination of antiplatelet and blood-thinning drugs for other people with microclots brought forward prolonged COVID symptoms and reduced microclots.
Meanwhile, German researchers report some good luck after a beloved and debatable dialysis-like remedy called heparin-induced extracorporeal LDL precipitation, or HELP apheresis, which has been performed on thousands of patients.
There’s also a lot of interest in the much more widely available over-the-counter enzyme supplements that Pretorius and Kell will read in a lab next year. and bacterial fermentation of soybeans, respectively) which serve as herbal clot blocks.
These supplements have long been available in sports food stores, and COVID patients have been self-reporting their effects for a long time.
Most hematologists and long-time COVID experts advise against taking unproven supplements, blood thinners, or blood thinners due to the apparent dangers of excessive bleeding or even death. But they actually understand why patients desperately feel the need.
“I can’t believe I’m in a scenario where only cool researchers are expected to solve the problem,” VanElzakker says. “The way it happened with AIDS is that a lot of the data on things tested came from patients. “
Davis also worries that patients will recommend unproven remedies because Americans would possibly react badly.
Meanwhile, Davis, Pretorius and other longtime COVID advocates and researchers that microclots are the most productive explanation for the condition say the next steps need to be taken urgently: making testing accessible, funding more studies and starting clinical trials.
Relying on regimen lab controls that show long-term COVID patients are perfectly healthy when they obviously aren’t is no longer acceptable, not only for patients, but also for researchers looking for solutions. “These other people are very sick,” says Pretorius. So just because Western medicine hasn’t discovered the biomarker doesn’t mean that the common pathology lab can check it smoothly, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. “
SOURCES:
Hannah Davis, Founding Member and Researcher, Patient-Led Research Collaboration.
Etheresia (Resia) Pretorius, PhD, Head of Department and Research Professor Emeritus, Department of Physiological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Douglas Kell, PhD, Research Chair in Systems Biology, Department of Biochemistry, University of Liverpool, UK
Michael VanElzakker, PhD, neuroscientist, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School; co-founder, PolyBio Research Foundation.
Biochemistry Journal: “A Central Role for Amyloid Fibrin Microclots in COVID/PASC: Origins and Curative Implications. “
Preprint, medRxiv: “Prevalence of Amyloid Blood Clots in COVID-19 Plasma. “
Cardiovascular diabetology: prevalence of symptoms, comorbidities, amyloid fibrin microclots and platelet pathology in other people with prolonged/post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC).
Bioanalytical Sciences Group: “The long COVID and amyloid fibrin (fibrinaloid) microclots”.
U. S. Government Accountability Office: “Science and Tech Spotlight: Long Covid. “
The Guardian: “Could microclots help the mystery of the long covid?”
Frontiers in Microbiology: “Long COVID or Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC): An Overview of Biological Factors That May Contribute to Persistent Symptoms. “
Nature Microbiology: “Metagenomic compendium of 189,680 DNA viruses of the human microbiome”.
Bioscience reports, “SARS-CoV-2 spike protein S1 induces fibrin (gene) resistant to fibrinolysis: implications for microclot formation in COVID-19. “
Clinical infectious diseases: “The peak of coronavirus 2 of persistent circulating severe acute respiratory syndrome is related to the post-acute sequelae of coronavirus disease 2019. “
YouTube: “The pathology of the Covid ‘microclot’ with Dr. Jaco Laubscher”, Gez Medinger:.
Preprint, Research Square: “Triple combination treatment of amyloid fibrin clots and platelet pathology in others with prolonged/post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) could be their persistent symptoms”
The BMJ: “Covid patients for a long time abroad for a beloved and experimental ‘bloodwash'”.
Studies, surveys and supplements: “Frequently Asked Questions: Nattokinase, Lumbrokinase and Serrapeptase”.
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