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Why many of those struck by Long Covid may be suffering from glandular fever

Treeman

Senior Member
Messages
773
Location
York, England
Why many of those struck by Long Covid may be suffering from glandular fever: Blood tests on some patients are coming back positive for ‘reactivated’ Epstein-Barr - and it could lead to a range of effective treatments
  • Most would test positive for antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus if given a blood test
  • Tests carried out on long Covid patients are recording another type of antibodies
  • They suggest virus has ‘woken up’ and body is responding by fighting against it
Why many of those struck by Long Covid may really be suffering from glandular fever | Daily Mail Online
 

bensmith

Senior Member
Messages
1,547
I think i have ebv. Two of the three were positive. Not active infection though, is that the big one? Doctor levine put me on famvir.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
In ME/CFS patients, it is common to have antibody evidence for more than one active viral infection. So it would not be surprising if long COVID patients also have other active viral infections, in addition to coronavirus, like active EBV.

I expect if researchers employed the usual criteria used by ME/CFS specialists for serologically detecting chronic active infection in ME/CFS patients, they might find long COVID patients have an array of active viral infections, in addition to coronavirus.


In my case for example, my ME/CFS began after a coxsackievirus B4 infection, and I have high antibody levels to this virus, suggesting chronic active CVB4 infection.

However, I also have high antibodies to cytomegalovirus, and this virus might also be contributing to my ME/CFS.

It's likely my cytomegalovirus was inactive and dormant before I caught CVB4 and developed ME/CFS, but became active after catching CVB4.

Same may apply to long COVID patients: they may have had dormant viruses like EBV, HHV-6, cytomegalovirus, coxsackievirus B and echovirus before they caught coronavirus and developed long COVID, and maybe some of these dormant viruses reactivated once they were hit by long COVID.


The only problem is that long COVID researchers are unlikely to know that in order to detect chronic coxsackievirus B and echovirus infections in ME/CFS, Dr Chia found that only antibody tests using the neutralization method are sensitive enough. So if these researchers use the wrong enterovirus tests, they may erroneously conclude that coxsackievirus B and echovirus are not involved in long COVID.
 
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5vforest

Senior Member
Messages
273
Is there a scientific source that this article is citing? The Daily Mail, in addition to not being a reputable source, is practically unreadable on my phone because of all the ads / spam.
 

Treeman

Senior Member
Messages
773
Location
York, England
Is there a scientific source that this article is citing? The Daily Mail, in addition to not being a reputable source, is practically unreadable on my phone because of all the ads / spam.
Professor Angus Dalgleish, an expert in cancer, viruses and the immune system at St George’s, University of London

Prof Danny Altmann, immunologist at Imperial College London

Prof Dalgleish was one of the leading AIDS researchers

Virologist Lawrence Young, a professor at the University of Warwick

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