by Daniel Brouse
help@membranwe.com
Part I: What is a persistent virus? (The Chronic Infection Hypothesis)
Persistent viruses are not cleared but remain in specific cells of infected individuals. Persistent infections may involve stages of both silent and productive infection without rapidly killing the host. Diseases caused by persistent virus infections include acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), AIDS-related complexes, chronic hepatitis, Epstein-Barr (the virus that causes most cases of cases of mononucleosis), subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (chronic measles encephalitis), chronic papovavirus encephalitis (progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy), several herpesvirus-induced diseases, and COVID-19.
“Some of the theories for what may be causing long-COVID symptoms include the persistence of the virus. So, instead of the virus coming and going, it sticks around causing inflammation, auto-immune problems and changes in the microbiome,” Dr. Michael Peluso, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco said.
“You can start thinking about getting COVID as almost an accelerant to aging. The viral infection accelerates the aging process in people,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center at Washington University in St. Louis and the chief of research and education service at Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.
Dr. Al-Aly researched data from millions of people across the country. The studies on kidney outcomes in long COVID, long COVID in the brain and long COVID in the heart had similar patterns.
“We have seen that people are losing about three to four percent kidney function in the year following that infection. That usually happens with three to four years of aging,” Al-Aly said.
Long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID-19
Long-term neurologic outcomes of COVID-19
Long-term SARS-CoV-2 Found in Multiple Organs
COVID has been found to persist for months in individuals even if their case was mild. The virus continues to infect multiple organs including the brain. The U.S. National Institutes of Health said they found the pathogen is capable of replicating in human cells beyond the respiratory tract and can infect all organs.
A Connecticut patient had/has COVID for 471 Days (and still going as of July 02, 2022) that has evolved into 3 new lineages. She currently has three types of persistent COVID at the same time. Two of the mutations were created by the patient and will likely develop into more mutations. “The chronic infection hypothesis for novel SARS-CoV-2 variant emergence is increasingly gaining credence following the appearance of Omicron. Here we investigate intrahost evolution and genetic diversity of lineage B.1.517 during a SARS-CoV-2 chronic infection lasting for 471 days (and still ongoing) with consistently recovered infectious virus and high viral loads. During the infection, we found an accelerated virus evolutionary rate translating to 35 nucleotide substitutions per year, approximately two-fold higher than the global SARS-CoV-2 evolutionary rate. This intrahost evolution led to the emergence and persistence of at least three genetically distinct genotypes suggesting the establishment of spatially structured viral populations continually reseeding different genotypes into the nasopharynx.” (Accelerated SARS-CoV-2 intrahost evolution leading to distinct genotypes during chronic infection)
The chronic infection hypothesis is important work. Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the clinical epidemiology center at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri, who has led separate studies into the long-term effects of COVID-19 says, “For a long time now, we have been scratching our heads and asking why long-COVID seems to affect so many organ systems. This paper sheds some light, and may help explain why long-COVID can occur even in people who had mild or asymptomatic acute disease.”
The virus lives for an undetermined amount of time after you test negative. These autopsies were performed on people up to 230 days after asymptomatic and mild cases of COVID.
“We show that SARS-CoV-2 is widely distributed, even among patients who died with asymptomatic to mild COVID-19, and that virus replication is present in multiple pulmonary and extrapulmonary tissues early in infection. Further, we detected persistent SARS-CoV-2 RNA in multiple anatomic sites, including regions throughout the brain, for up to 230 days following symptom onset. Despite extensive distribution of SARS-CoV-2 in the body, we observed a paucity of inflammation or direct viral cytopathology outside of the lungs. Our data prove that SARS-CoV-2 causes systemic infection and can persist in the body for months.”
“One patient in the autopsy study was a juvenile who likely died from unrelated seizure complications, suggesting infected children without severe COVID-19 can also experience systemic infection.”
Read the study: SARS-CoV-2 infection and persistence throughout the human body and brain
In the study Screening for SARS-CoV-2 persistence in Long COVID patients using sniffer dogs and scents from axillary sweats samples, they have found persistent SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) over a year and a half after the individual’s initial infection.
In yet another study, Gastrointestinal symptoms and fecal shedding of SARS-CoV-2 RNA suggest prolonged gastrointestinal infection, scientists found COVID in people’s stool up to 7 months after they tested negative for COVID. “The extended presence of viral RNA in feces, but not in respiratory samples, along with the association of fecal viral RNA shedding with GI symptoms suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infects the GI tract and that this infection can be prolonged in a subset of individuals with COVID-19.”
PART II: What does it mean? (SARS-CoV-2 and Your Kids)
Is SARS-CoV-2 being a persistent virus and the risks associated with persistent viruses. Here are a couple examples:
Chicken pox and Shingles. “Shingles is caused by varicella zoster virus (VZV), the same virus that causes chickenpox. After a person recovers from chickenpox, the virus stays dormant (inactive) in their body. The virus can reactivate later, causing shingles.”
Mononucleosis, Multiple Sclerosis, and Epstein-Barr. The Epstein-Barr virus is a persistent virus linked to causing Mononucleosis (Mono) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Studies have also found “people who developed shingles had four times the risk of being diagnosed with MS within the following year.”
Persistent viruses often cause long term health problems, a decreased quality of living, and a shortened lifespan. Some of these chronic conditions will become apparent immediately. Some of the chronic conditions, cancers, and other ailments may not present themselves for years. Research has shown, “Associations between gut microbiota composition, levels of cytokines and inflammatory markers in patients with COVID-19 suggest that the gut microbiome is involved in the magnitude of COVID-19 severity possibly via modulating host immune responses. Furthermore, the gut microbiota dysbiosis after disease resolution could contribute to persistent (long-COVID) symptoms.” Good gut bacteria is a critical component of the human immune system.
Where is COVID Lurking in the body?
The problem with studying persistent viruses is you typically need to do an autopsy to obtain the tissue. A new technique can be used on live volunteers by performing a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan. The scan can find persistent virus locations in the body of the HIV virus. They are also applying this technique to find where the persistent SARS-CoV-2 is lurking in long-COVID patients.
This BBC episode of Science In Action “A medical scan which reveals where HIV and other viruses hide in the body” explains:
Protect Children
Unfortunately, I have seen many of my friends posting about their children having COVID. These kids now have a forever health risk. It may be many years before we know all the consequences; however, we already are seeing that COVID elevates the severity of conditions one is predisposed to, such as, a pre-diabetic that gets COVID turning into a diabetic. This is one of the reasons so many children are being diagnosed for COVID when hospitalized for other conditions. COIVD is triggering other ailments. “Persons aged <18 years with COVID-19 were more likely to receive a new diabetes diagnosis >30 days after infection than were those without COVID-19 and those with prepandemic acute respiratory infections,” said the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Report.
One should do everything possible to avoid exposure to their children. There is zero (0) evidence of prolonged immunity through infection. So, there is no (none, zip, nadda) benefits of infection. There is a 99% chance of a negative outcome from infection.