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Doesn‘t Long Covid after vaccinations rule out the persisting virus theory?

Messages
29
Currently there are two major theories of the pathology for Long Covid:

1. The virus somehow persists in tissue and keeps the body fatigued with new outbreaks
2. The initial infection pushes the immune system into an unbalanced state (possibly autoimmune) that keeps the body in a constant hyperactive fighting state


But there are many cases where people get Long Covid, or at least symptomatically almost equal to Long Covid after vaccination. Since the vaccines don‘t have any replicating virus in them shouldn’t this rule out the theory of persisting virus.
 

Springbok1988

Senior Member
Messages
155
Epstein-Barr virus reactivation after COVID-19 vaccination in a young immunocompetent man: a case report

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9200649/#abstract-1title

I tend to lean in the direction of the cause being a reaction to an initial infection (or immune response) and not an active infection. That being said, vaccines can reactivate latent viruses.
 
Messages
29
Another theory you havn't mentioned is that covid can reactivate EBV. Also as Springbok mentioned a vaccine can reactive EBV.

Yes, but only about 40% have EBV in studies. Of course there could be multiple pathologies but I think it’s more likely to be one. So reactivated EBV seems to be a second-order effect for me.
 

xebex

Senior Member
Messages
840
My ME was triggered by a vaccine 12 years ago. As far as I’m concerned vaccines (and viruses or even stress both physical and emotional) can trigger the immune system into a hyper vigilant state that then doesn’t back down. This eventually causes the autonomic nervous system to also be in a hyper vigilant state.
 
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ljimbo423

Senior Member
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4,705
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United States, New Hampshire
But there are many cases where people get Long Covid, or at least symptomatically almost equal to Long Covid after vaccination. Since the vaccines don‘t have any replicating virus in them shouldn’t this rule out the theory of persisting virus.

I think it must in these people. One can't get Covid 19 from the vaccine. So it could be concluded that at least in some people, Long Covid can be caused by something other then the Covid 19 virus.

Just as ME/CFS can be triggered by many things too, not just viral infections. I do think ME/CFS and Long Covid are the same illness.
 

Pyrrhus

Senior Member
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But there are many cases where people get Long Covid, or at least symptomatically almost equal to Long Covid after vaccination. Since the vaccines don‘t have any replicating virus in them shouldn’t this rule out the theory of persisting virus.

Actually, this phenomenon has been used to support the idea of persisting virus:

What if someone had a coronavirus infection, without generating antibodies, and then got a vaccination?

If someone happens to have a "silent" coronavirus infection, without antibodies, is it possible for them to develop COVID-like symptoms when they simultaneously receive a coronavirus vaccination? In this case, the vaccination might spur their immune system into action, finally attacking the silent coronavirus infection and producing COVID-like symptoms. Understandably, the person might then blame the vaccine for the COVID-like symptoms.

And what about Long Covid? If someone has a "silent" coronavirus infection, without antibodies, is it possible for them to develop Long Covid symptoms when they simultaneously receive a coronavirus vaccination? The journal Science just published the following article:

In rare cases, coronavirus vaccines may cause Long Covid–like symptoms
https://www.science.org/content/art...avirus-vaccines-may-cause-long-covid-symptoms


Note: A rebuttal to the argument that vaccination-triggered Long Covid supports the idea of persisting virus is the observation that some patients in New Zealand developed vaccination-triggered Long Covid at a time when very little virus was circulating in the population.
 
Messages
29
Hmm that seems very constructed.
If somebody has a „silent“ infection and therefore has virus in the body, a vaccination that triggers the body to clear this virus should improve the situation not worsen it.
 

Marylib

Senior Member
Messages
1,155
One person in the US, Michelle, went to great lengths to obtain testing before her immunization, afterward the immunization, and then again post her covid infection, proving that in her case, the symptoms were the result of the immunization. I watched her most recent video about her treatment and - sadly but not surprisingly - the PEM is the thing that has not shifted. Which to me seems like the giant circle of confirmation once again that people sometimes get symptoms of ME/CFS following an immunization. Hopefully, she will get well again. Hopefully everyone will, but....She posts her test results on twitter and maybe here, too.

 

Marylib

Senior Member
Messages
1,155
Actually, this phenomenon has been used to support the idea of persisting virus:




Note: A rebuttal to the argument that vaccination-triggered Long Covid supports the idea of persisting virus is the observation that some patients in New Zealand developed vaccination-triggered Long Covid at a time when very little virus was circulating in the population.
Unfortunately, you could not get IgN testing pre-vaccination in NZ, outside of enrolling in a study which required vaccination to continue as a study participant.
 

hapl808

Senior Member
Messages
2,052
I think nothing can be ruled out or in, just making some hypotheses more plausible depending on the underlying explanation being theorized.

For instance, maybe there's a persisting pathogen that no one has identified. If you had an HHV infection and an EBV infection, an antiviral you took for one might be unknowingly affecting the other. So you're testing your EBV titers and treating and seeing the levels go down and concluding that you proved the causal relationship - but it's just a correlation. Maybe it was the HHV titers, or maybe some wholly unidentified issue.

Or maybe it's a combination - which is my theory. That a vaccine or virus or injury can trigger an immune dysfunction, which then leads to autonomic dysfunction. That can all lead to an inability to deal with normal pathogens, thus having persistent chronic infections degrading health (AIDS type stuff).

So the initial cause might not be the thing causing symptoms 10 years later, and no idea if you treat the initial cause if that fixes the symptoms, or who knows. We're lacking much understanding.
 

Pyrrhus

Senior Member
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If somebody has a „silent“ infection and therefore has virus in the body, a vaccination that triggers the body to clear this virus should improve the situation not worsen it.

Not quite. The acute symptoms of a viral infection are often caused by the immune system, not by the virus itself. So if your body doesn't mount an immune response to a virus, there may not be any acute symptoms of the viral infection, even though there is a viral infection. Then, when your body finally mounts an immune response to the viral infection, you will suddenly see strong symptoms. This is a common occurrence with other viruses.

And remember that vaccination does not clear the virus, it only generates an immune response to the virus. Vaccination is never a guarantee of clearing the virus.

In fact, if I recall correctly, there is one particular virus where this concept is profoundly demonstrated. This particular virus is partially lethal to immunocompetent people. However, people with severe immunodeficiencies have no symptoms and survive just fine. In this case, the virus does not cause any symptoms on its own, but the immune response to the virus is partially fatal!

EDIT: clarified that it is an anecdote, as I don't have a reference handy
 
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Hip

Senior Member
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17,824
But there are many cases where people get Long Covid, or at least symptomatically almost equal to Long Covid after vaccination. Since the vaccines don‘t have any replicating virus in them shouldn’t this rule out the theory of persisting virus.

It is not uncommon to get ME/CFS from a vaccination. Something like 1 or 2% of ME/CFS patients have their illness triggered by a vaccine. Many vaccines can trigger ME/CFS, it is not just one specific vaccine (although hepatitis B vaccine seems to cause more ME/CFS cases than other vaccines).

Thus the fatiguing illness that follows a COVID vaccination is probably no different to the ME/CFS that follows other vaccines. In other words, this post-COVID vaccine illness would be better labelled as ME/CFS, rather than long COVID (of course, long COVID and ME/CFS may be one and the same anyway).


Now, in the case of vaccine-triggered ME/CFS, these patients find that they too have chronically high antibody levels to one or more of the classic ME/CFS viruses (viruses like coxsackievirus B, echovirus, EBV or cytomegalovirus).

So vax-triggered ME/CFS patients show the same viral activity as regular ME/CFS patients (regular patients whose illness was triggered by an acute viral infection).

In the case of patients who have never caught COVID, but developed ME/CFS after a COVID vaccine, they will obviously not have a chronic active SARS-CoV-2 infection, but they will likely find active EBV, cytomegalovirus, coxsackievirus B or echovirus.
 
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marcjf

Senior Member
Messages
127
I believe persistent viruses plays a role, but it is too simplistic of an explanation. Who does not have persistent viruses?

Taking a look at this recent work that biopsied tissue from healthy adults that died in car accidents, it seems to be pretty common: "A tissue level atlas of the healthy human virome"
https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-020-00785-5

They found viruses in pretty much every organ (brain, liver, kidney, etc.). Some are pretty common, like EBV.
And we know that virtually all adults have been infected with EBV at some point (~95% test positive for antibodies on population samples).

I see EBV being thrown around very often when talking about MS specially, but also ME,. But if it is such a problematic virus, we would have gone extinct by now.
 

hapl808

Senior Member
Messages
2,052
I see EBV being thrown around very often when talking about MS specially, but also ME,. But if it is such a problematic virus, we would have gone extinct by now.

And again, we don't know what's a correlation and what's a causation. Maybe there's another persistent pathogen that makes us more susceptible to persistent EBV. It's all just guesswork until we see at least see some much tighter and more repeatable and predictive correlations.
 

SNT Gatchaman

Senior Member
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302
Location
New Zealand
I see EBV being thrown around very often when talking about MS specially, but also ME,. But if it is such a problematic virus, we would have gone extinct by now.

@Manuel has recently published the excellent CD4+ Cytotoxic T Cells Involved in the Development of EBV-Associated Diseases (2022) which discusses the relationship of EBV to HLA haplotypes.

Since EBV was transferred to a hominid ancestor approximately 12 million years ago, and as the DRB1*04, *03, and *02 lineages are the oldest, it may be thought that those individuals with the DR2-DQ6, DR3-DQ2, or DR4-DQ8 haplotypes—against which, the immune evasion mechanisms of this virus have evolved the most—may be less resistant to the infection, and have a greater risk of developing EBV-associated diseases.

EBV is associated with malignancy and autoimmune disease. 90% of the population have latent EBV (among other viruses) populating B cells. Our control might be more tenuous if we have the certain HLA haplotypes, but this might never result in actual disease or symptoms during an individual's life. The wrong set of circumstances though, including a virus like SARS-CoV-2 coming along, might tip the immune control balance in EBV's favour. Depending on other factors, including the tissue involved, the result might be one of a number of autoimmune diseases or cancers.

However, this would not explain why a virus that is present in 90% of the population does not affect all hosts equally, and is even innocuous in most cases. It is here that the possession of one of the “ancestral” HLA-II alleles, to which EBV has generated resistance, could favor the development of these diseases.

Perhaps we all share the ME predisposition, rather than, say, MS (or lymphoma). It won't be as straightforward as just the HLA genes. Those HLA types might be favourable against other viruses, which is why they persist in the population: genetically fitter in many respects (except for the possibility of autoimmunity/cancer).

See forum threads —
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Taking a look at this recent work that biopsied tissue from healthy adults that died in car accidents, it seems to be pretty common: "A tissue level atlas of the healthy human virome"
https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-020-00785-5

Very interesting paper, and as the authors say, it is the very first of its kind to look at the prevalence of common viruses in human tissues (using people who died in car crashes).

The right hand side of Figure 2 (below) shows the prevalence of various viruses in various human organs. In most cases, the positive rate is near 0, meaning that the prevalence will be around 0 to about 10% of people.

12915_2020_785_Fig2_HTML.png


It's odd that they found plant viruses (like tomato spotted wilt virus) in some organs. The authors suggest this may have come from contamination (such as plant matter in the gastrointestinal tract).


What this study does not detect however is whether the infection is active. In the case of DNA viruses (such as the herpesvirus family show in the first 7 lines of the figure), these can exist in a latent inactive state within human cells. In the latent state, they may be harmless; but if reactivated or partially reactivated, they can start producing viral proteins that can have pernicious effects.

And conspicuous by their absence in this study are the enteroviruses (like coxsackievirus A, coxsackievirus B, echovirus) which are common in the general population, and associated with a number of diseases (ME/CFS, T1D, heart disease, heart valve disease, Parkinson's, ALS, etc).

It is strange that no enteroviruses were found, as these should be present in some health people, as well as in people with the ill health conditions listed.
 
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