Long COVID May Physically Damage the Nerves That Control the Stomach
Our study reveals that Long-COVID-19 patients suffer from significant structural damage to the vagus nerve fibers in their stomach lining. By analyzing biopsies from twelve patients, we found a drastic reduction in cholinergic innervation compared to healthy controls. This physical loss of nerve density provides a concrete anatomical explanation for the persistent digestive and autonomic symptoms reported by survivors.
This structural autonomic impairment may represent an anatomical substrate underlying dysautonomia in Long-COVID-19.
- flextheruler
8 people as the entire control group... yeah I'd say "may" is the operative word in the title. My takeaway from long covid is that it's probably as severe as the much more deadly pandemic of the Spanish Flu. Considering there's now a newfound interest in "long flu", I think a spotlight has now been placed on the impact of severe respiratory illness. Whether that illness be covid or one of the any other respiratory illnesses.
- kranke155
hopefully we will get somewhere with these studies. The lack of solid research on a disease that affects millions (likely a good percentage undiagnosed) is really tough for patients - and myself really, as I've found i likely suffer from this.
Finding out about autonomic dysfunction and small fiber neuropathy as I researched my own fatigue and finding out I likely have this has been very challenging.
- jph00
Wow mucosal innervation was around half in long covid patients - that's super worrying and would have nasty symptoms in practice.
The findings also support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 may cause structural nerve damage, which is perhaps the even bigger worry. :(
- peab
i noticed a thing with headlines like these: "x may cause y". Whenever it's "may" or "might", it's almost always meaningless
- remarkEon
Is there a test for long covid?