long covid

Bartonella henselae?

/ SupremeCmdr / 2 Comments

The case study that caught my attention involved a 26-year-old woman who had experienced mild COVID-19 but continued to suffer from persistent symptoms for five months afterward, including noticeable axillary (armpit) lymph node swelling. When doctors performed a biopsy of the swollen lymph node and analyzed it with clinical metagenomic testing, they discovered something unexpected: Bartonella henselae DNA and RNA. Even more telling was that when the patient was treated with the antibiotic clarithromycin, her symptoms improved.

This case illustrates something I’ve suspected and observed in my practice: COVID-19 may be reactivating latent infections that were previously dormant in the body. The immune dysregulation caused by SARS-CoV-2 appears to create an environment where opportunistic pathogens like Bartonella can resurface and cause symptoms. Hidden Infections Behind Long COVID: Unmasking Bartonella henselae – https://www.jillcarnahan.com/2025/06/21/hidden-infections-behind-long-covid-unmasking-bartonella-henselae/

Hmm… https://www.cdc.gov/bartonella/about/about-bartonella-henselae.html

Answers emerge about long COVID recovery – Nature Briefing

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How many people with long COVID recover

Research is slowly shedding light on how many people get bettter from long COVID, despite debate over the definition of the condition, its cause and what ‘recovery’ even means. Improvements seem to plateau after one year: in a study of 1,106 people, close to 23% still had symptoms after six months, falling to around 19% after one year and 17% after two. Another study finds that one-third of people who had symptoms after six months no longer had them at nine months. Risk factors include being female, being older, having a high body mass index, smoking, having asthma or diabetes, and having a severe COVID-19 infection. Vaccination seems to reduce the risk. The diabetes drug metformin and the antiviral Paxlovid are showing promise for preventing long COVID — but only if given during the acute phase.

Daily briefing: Answers emerge about long COVID recovery – https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02190-8

Yikes!

Micro-clots and long COVID (it’s a hypothesis people)

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But many hematologists and COVID-19 researchers worry that enthusiasm for the clot hypothesis has outpaced the data. They want to see larger studies and stronger causal evidence. And they are concerned about people seeking out unproven, potentially risky treatments.

Nature 608, 662-664 (2022)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02286-7

This is a good article on the micro-clot hypothesis behind long Covid.

Don’t bother with the herpes article but if you have to, here you go:

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02296-5

Another Reason to GET VACCINATED

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Since the early onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the loss or distortion of smell and taste have emerged as one of the telltale symptoms of COVID-19, with an estimated 86 percent of mild cases displaying signs of olfactory dysfunction. In many cases, patients cannot perceive smells (known as anosmia) — and with it the nuances of flavor inextricable from aroma — or any kind of taste (ageusia). In others, the dysfunction eventually manifests as warped senses of smell and taste (parosmia and parageusia, respectively), rendering previously familiar scents and flavors rancid, like being assaulted with the overwhelming stench of rot, feces, and chemicals.

We Asked People Who Lost Their Taste to COVID: What Do You Eat in a Day? — https://www.eater.com/2021/2/5/22267667/covid-19-loss-distorted-taste-smell-anosmia-parosmia-symptom-food-diaries

Interesting set of short interviews with some long haul Covid-19 sufferers. Think about it. What do you eat when everything tastes like crap?

Long Covid…(yeah, it’s real)

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A total of 669 people were followed (mean age 43 years, 60% female, 25% of healthcare professionals and 69% without underlying risk factors that could be related to complications from COVID-19). At 6 weeks from diagnosis, nearly a third of participants still had one or more symptoms related to COVID-19, mainly fatigue (14%), shortness of breath (9%) and loss of taste or smell (12%). In addition, 6% reported a persistent cough and 3% reported headaches. Dr. Mayssam Nehme, Senior Resident in Professor Guessous’s team and first author of this work, also explains how these patients felt: “In addition to the physical distress of their symptoms, many were very worried: how much longer would it last? Were some after-effects irrecoverable? Even without a clear medical answer, in the current state of knowledge, it is important to accompany concerned patients and to listen to them,” she adds. With this in mind, the HUG has set up a specific consultation for long COVID patients in order to improve their care and guide them through the health system.

Université de Genève. “COVID-19: persistent symptoms in one third of cases.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201208111551.htm (accessed December 8, 2020) — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201208111551.htm

Journal Reference

  1. Mayssam Nehme, Olivia Braillard, Gabriel Alcoba, Sigiriya Aebischer Perone, Delphine Courvoisier, François Chappuis, Idris Guessous. COVID-19 Symptoms: Longitudinal Evolution and Persistence in Outpatient Settings. Annals of Internal Medicine, 2020; DOI: 10.7326/M20-5926

I’ve been quiet for a few days, no writing, no posting. I conducted a small experiment of allowing contact with tiny human petri dishes while not wearing a mask. Naturally I caught whatever those tiny disease vectors had. The good news? My life partner wore a mask during the encounter. She’s fine.

Masks work.