"One study found that in people with neurological COVID symptoms, the immune system seems to be activated specifically in the central nervous system, creating inflammation. But brain inflammation is probably not caused by the virus infecting that organ directly. Avindra Nath, who has long studied postviral neurological syndromes at the National Institutes of Health, found something similar in an autopsy study of people who died of COVID. “When you look at the COVID brain, you don't actually find [huge amounts of virus, but] we found a lot of immune activation,” he says, particularly around blood vessels. The examinations suggested that immune cells called macrophages had been stirred up. “Macrophages are not that precise in their attack,” Nath says. “They come and start chewing things up; they produce all kinds of free radicals, cytokines. It's almost like blanket bombing—it ends up causing a lot of damage. And they're very hard to shut down, so they persist for a long time. These are the unwelcome guests” that may be causing persistent inflammation in the brain. "
And then later..
"Nath, who also studies ME/CFS, says that “we think mechanistically they are going to be related.” Researchers suspect that ME/CFS, like some cases of long COVID, could be autoimmune in nature, with autoantibodies keeping the immune system activated. ME/CFS has been difficult to study because it often arises long after a mild infection, making it hard to identify a viral trigger. But with long COVID, Nath says, “the advantage is that we know exactly what started the process, and you can catch cases early in the [development of] ME/CFS-like symptoms.” In people who have had ME/CFS for years, “it's done damage, and it's hard to reverse that.” Nath speculates that for long COVID, if doctors could study people early in the illness, they would have a better chance of reversing the process."
My interpretation: chronic illness harms your body. Which body parts it damages depends on your disease. For us, it sure looks like the brain. Some injuries can heal, some can't. Think of emphysema- smoking hurts your lungs. You stop smoking, your lungs don't get more injured. But they can't go back to normal completely. Or diabetes- you can get your blood sugar under control, but once you have gone blind from the blood vessel damage, your sight isn't coming back. The implication is that once you have had inflammation from LC or ME/CFS in our brain long enough, this damage isn't going to be repaired either. Even with treatment, some part of our problems will be permanent. Consider MS- there are medications to stop or myelin from being damaged, but once it's gone, we don't et have a way to regrow it.
Of course, I'm having a bad and cynical day, so maybe there is a more positive interpretation.
