Christy Collins 🕊️

Huge finding from the @UCSF team. #longcovid patients have abnormally low levels of Natural Killer cells- the immune cells responsible for clearing virally infected cells. Consistent with the growing evidence for viral persistence as a cause of LC. 1/

@DuaneStorey Super interesting. I don’t think most labs check for IgM against spike. Was this the first lab you found that would do it?

Wow, here is a result I wasn’t expecting. My Covid functional panel has starting coming back This was taken on day 41 of antivirals. I’m now IgM positive for spike. That’s current or recent infection. My last known exposure was December of 2023. The IGG antibodies have climbed too for spike and nucleocapsid. This is a real signal, IGG for nucleocapsid only comes from natural exposure. While it’s possible there was a recent infection, I haven’t had any signs. I can only interpret this as my immune system is coming back online and re-engaging with something that’s been hiding, likely due to the antivirals. I absolutely wasn’t expecting this. I expect the interferon gamma information that should be released shortly will show active engagement. This is a smoking gun now.

Excited to work with @Invivyd to get this out. One of the most common questions I get from people in the #LongCOVID community are about vaccination alternatives. People still want to protect themselves from SARS-CoV-2 infection but many experience medrxiv.org/content/10.648… 1/

@polybioRF This is amazing. Thank you so much for everything you're doing!

It’s great to see the PolyBio-supported Long COVID tissue bank and LIINC collaborative featured in Men’s Health this week! Collaborating with Dr. Michael Peluso has driven forward PolyBio’s work and the Long COVID field at large. Check out the article 👇🏻 menshealth.com/health/a711309…

@DarainChains Really interesting point!

New study alert! 🚨 Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine (May 2026) shows COVID-19 history is linked to Coronary Slow Flow (CSF). This means blood is moving nearly 4x slower through the heart's microvessels. But the "why" is still being ignored. Let’s look at the forensics. The study finds unstable angina in patients with normal big arteries. Medicine calls this Microvascular Dysfunction. Some call it the Vascular Bomb. Why is the flow slow? Because the CARGO is the problem, not just the pipes. This study proves the smoke (Slow Flow), but ignores the fire (Infected Platelets). When blood moves 4x slower, tissues become hypoxic. This is why we feel the vibrating, the tremors, and the cranial swamp. The hardware is starving for oxygen. Remember the work from France (Bomsel)? SC2 infects the Megakaryocyte "Mama Cells" in the bone marrow. These factories pump out Infectious Platelets that are born angry and hyper-reactive. We are heading toward a crisis of Vascular Dementia and Heart Failure because we refuse to look at the software rewrite happening in our marrow. It’s time to bridge the gap between Neurology, Cardiology and Virology. The evidence is here. Let's get treatments going!🧬🔥 #LongCOVID #VascularBomb #MarrowInfection

"The third misconception is that people don't get #LongCovid anymore... we still see plenty of people who develop long COVID after their second, third, fourth, fifth, episode of COVID." — @MichaelPelusoMD menshealth.com/health/a711309…

@gymrat_bookworm These look really interesting - thanks for sharing. Looking forward to your review!

My vascular surgeon recommends, at minimum, that if I don't get a stent, that I must invest in good supportive wear since I have a vascular compression syndrome. My osteopaths and massage therapists have observed that my lymphatic system also sucks and is constantly swollen and clogged. If you have hypermobility, dysautonomia, and/or other chronic illnesses, I definitely recommend researching what you can do to support your blood and lymph flow. I'm having a hard time finding comfortable abdominal supports. I'm hoping this shapewear that is 3D printed to support lymph flow can help. Will provide a review!

This trial is not a fail. Look at the individual trajectories: a subgroup had substantial gains while pooled means hide it. We need to stop blindly trialling everyone and use exploratory biomarker analysis to find who responds. Precision medicine is the way out of LC & ME/CFS.

It is quite sobering that the placebo-controlled trials failed for both LDN and immunoadsorption. This highlights the main problem: ME/CFS is highly heterogeneous. My takeaway is that we need better subgrouping, especially for those who clearly have an autoimmune disease.

"When you start treating hypermobility as the fifth vital sign, [the list of differentials] completely changes." -------------- "You know what's wild, as a GI doctor, there was things I were taught in fellowship that I would never see in my career, Median Arcuate Ligament Syndrome (MALS), Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome, Retrograde Cricopharyngeus Dysfunction (R-CPD), are zero [incidence]. Really, really rare, but once you start treating people with hypermobility, you realize that they aren't that rare anymore. In fact, they are quite common, and it completely changes the way you think. In general, when we think "peptic ulcer disease", we think "h pylori". When we hear "bloating", we think "celiac disease, lactose tolerance." However, when treating hypermobility, the menu completely changes. You are thinking, "structural instability, motility issues, vascular compression,." So yes, in general, these conditions are rare, but not in people with hypermobility, which makes me think we don't have a rare disease problem, we have a pattern recognition problem."

@healingfromlc This is so horrible, Celine. I’m so sorry to hear it hasn’t improved. Really hope the MIT folks working on it can find some answers for you.

@NationalAnthemX @DarainChains Thymosin alpha 1 can probably get into most/all of our potential reservoir sites because it's a signalling molecules that our own body makes. So it's going to be effective in a lot more places than an antiviral.

@NationalAnthemX @DarainChains But the improvement was way more subtle compared to Thymosin alpha 1. Once I switched to that, in Aug. 2024, I felt extremely sick, had a huge herx, and then when it all wore off 6 weeks later, my PEM was gone. So it really was the gamechanger.

Mechanical petichaie is not the kind from low platelets. It happens when you have vascular dysfunction and/or disease. It can happen from SC2 eating your collagen and also from increased intravascular pressure from compressions and other mechanical issues. They appeared sporadically three years ago and became a permanent staple of my signs that are obvious with LC. It's not an invisible disease. There are signs of vascular dysfunction doctors can learn to look for. They need a standard of these signs to look for. I am focusing on signs lately since symptoms are so subjective. Here is what they look like. To the inexperienced eye they look like a bunch of freckles under the skin in a uniform pattern. They start off red and fade to brown. I am curious what this looks like on dark skin so we can have good examples for medicine. Hopefully someone out there can show us. They can appear on limbs or the torso depending on when the increased pressure is.

@NationalAnthemX @DarainChains Putrino is the best! Although I suspect the CoRe center is not able to give out peptides as they have to follow Mt. Sinai regulations… And thank you! It’s going ok. Working on figuring out remaining blood vessel damage now, unfortunately that still remains after everything…

@sun_in_winter12 @DarainChains Thanks for sharing this:) I have a doc's appt in NYC next week. But not w/ Dr. Putrino. Maybe I should switch doctors and be treated by him? Hope your Spring is going well. 💙🫂

@NationalAnthemX @DarainChains So the names are a bit tricky- Thymogen alpha 1 is the capsule - it’s technically a much smaller molecule which is why it can be taken by mouth & survive the digestive tract Thymosin alpha 1 is the injection- and yes honestly that was the game changer for me

@sun_in_winter12 @DarainChains Especially interested in your use of Immune Stimulant Peptides (Thymogen alpha 1: capsules & injections). Wonder if I should skip the capsules and go straight to the needle? :)

@LEXPRESS Please don’t legitimize this work. It’s directly harmful to the patient community and we’ve spent years begging them to stop.

Après avoir assisté à une série de conférences organisées dans le cadre du projet « Long Covid », notre journaliste Victor Garcia explique pourquoi les scientifiques explorent le rôle potentiel du cerveau dans les cas de Covid long. ➡️ l.lexpress.fr/1mS

@DarainChains For anyone who wants to see what helped me, I'm writing about it here. longcovidbegone.substack.com (Obviously what worked for me may not be the same for others, but I'm offering it up in case it's helpful!).

@DarainChains I did a bunch of treatments that I think got most (but maybe not all) of the virus out of my body. That stopped a lot of my symptoms like physical PEM and also petichae (Although I do still have remaining vascular damage & iliac vein compression) 2/