Biology, Philosophy, Technology. Joined Twitter to help fight against #longcovid
United Kingdom
Joined February 2021
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(1/4) Long Covid: Latest Evidence-based Pathophysiology Clues Infographic 🧩
On this day, exactly 5 years ago I tested positive for a Covid infection that triggered the onset of my Long Covid and its devastating symptoms, which still debilitate me to this day.
To mark this unhappy anniversary, I have pieced together and summarised the latest research findings into the below one-page, accessible infographic in the hopes of raising awareness and sparking interest.
Clickable PDF link in next post
Sam McIntyre retweeted
500 Athlete Signatures 🤩⭐️🏅
We’ve had so much interest since our initial athlete letter to the Prime Minister that we’ve now sent a second letter, this time with 500 athletes backing my call to meet with me and fund ME properly (prev 360).
Huge names including David Moyes (we know Andy’s an Everton fan 👀), Millie Bright & so many stars from a variety of sports 🙏🏼 I can’t tell you how grateful I am to every single one of you!!
Please @andyburnham , take an illness that’s been neglected more than almost anything else seriously 🙏🏼 1.35m people in the country estimated to be impacted, that’s a lot of the vote share!! @UKLabour
I know I owe lots of people replies and thanks, please bear with me and thank you so much again ❤️❤️❤️
Sam McIntyre retweeted
And just like that, we have our first clinical trial and pharma partnership in the works! We’re teaming up with Prolong to take the drug they developed for stroke and see if it can help our patients with ME/CFS by increasing oxygen delivery and blood flow. Thanks to the 200TB of data @chroniclebioAI has amassed, combined with our AI engine, we are identifying patients that show hypoxia so we can focus this trial on them.
This is really the promise of the company: understanding biology at such a deep level that we can match the exact right patients to the exact right drugs and massively increase the likelihood of success of trials.
Going from company creation to first trial in less than two years is pretty cool, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to prove we can improve patients’ lives. One step at a time.
Today we are announcing our first clinical trial. We're joining forces with Prolong to evaluate a potential treatment for post exertional malaise (PEM) in #MECFS.
Sanguinate is an investigational intravenous therapy designed to deliver oxygen to deprived tissues, support blood flow, and reduce inflammation. The planned multi-site Phase 2a trial will evaluate the drug in at least 40 patients with first dosing expected mid-2027.
Most trials enroll patients based on symptoms alone, but recruitment for this study will leverage ChronicleBio's proprietary endotype intelligence platform to identify patients whose disease biology suggests they may be more likely to respond.
We are excited for our partnership with Prolong and grateful for the patient community that drives everything we do.
Read More: chroniclebio.com/news/chroni…
Sam McIntyre retweeted
Hi everyone, we’ve been working on something 🙏🏼 I’ve written a second letter to Andy Burnham, alongside 360 sports people, to urge him to meet with me and fund research into my much neglected health issue which impacts millions of others.
I can’t believe 360 people signed in just 1 week, so many amazing names and messages still coming in of people wanting to add theirs (so feel free to message to add yours, we’re keeping on the pressure!!!)
The list includes 114 Olympians, with 77 medals between them (and that’s not even including Worlds and Europeans 🤯). Also some huge names from football and many other sports!!
Thank you SO much to everyone that signed, I can’t tell you how much it means to me when I’m truly at rock bottom ❤️❤️❤️
I know everyone wants their issues taken seriously, but this has been neglected like nothing else. WE HAVE 0 APPROVED TREATMENTS!!! Please listen 🙏🏼 @andyburnham @number10gov @UKLabour @DHSCgovuk
Sam McIntyre retweeted
The Olympic sprinter now bedbound for 22 hours a day bbc.in/3TWaqpx
Sam McIntyre retweeted
Charité Berlin researchers studied 49 Long COVID patients receiving head and neck lymphatic drainage.
Brain fog, concentration, headaches and fatigue improved, raising questions about the brain’s waste clearance system.
Controlled trials are needed.
researchsquare.com/article/r…
This ORF7a finding is interesting! ORF7A upregulates PDK4, Fluge (2016) found this same enzyme to be upregulated in ME/CFS. This upregulation prevents pyruvate from entering the TCA cycle, meaning extra lactate and the cell switching to burning fat and ketones instead of glucose
SARS-CoV-2 ORF7a: a mitochondrial saboteur!
➡️ A striking study shows that the viral accessory protein ORF7a hijacks host metabolism, impairing mitochondrial respiration, increasing ROS and disrupting glucose/lipid metabolism. It boosts PDK4, suppresses pyruvate oxidation—and, remarkably, also damages complex I and respiratory supercomplex assembly.
👉 The virus isn’t just using the cell’s machinery—it appears to be rewiring and destabilizing the mitochondria themselves.
cell.com/cell-reports/fullte…
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Sam McIntyre retweeted
Long COVID capillary damage is real. Here are my damaged capillaries. For comparison these small and straight capillaries were photographed by me testing the capillaroscope on the healthy clinic staff.
Sam McIntyre retweeted
1) An NIH study found that ME/CFS and Long Covid patients have reduced levels of norepinephrine and its metabolites in the cerebrospinal fluid.
The norepinephrine reduction correlated with clinical measures such as fatigue, handgrip strength, and general health.
ALT Self-made plot of the main results showing reduced cerebrospinal fluid concentration levels of norepinephrine + DHPG + MHPG in patients with ME/CFS and Long Covid.
Sam McIntyre retweeted
1) There's an interesting lead in the ME/CFS genetic data: the eccentric medium spiny neuron (eMSN), a cell type in the brain discovered only a couple of years ago.
All based on preliminary findings, but the data looks rather interesting.
Sam McIntyre retweeted
This may be one of the more important long COVID papers in a while.
A new study in Frontiers in Immunology suggests that COVID can trigger new-onset insulin resistance - and that this may drive abnormal NETosis in neutrophils months after infection🧵
Sam McIntyre retweeted
For #FluorescenceFriday, the work that motivated my move to Germany! I join the @erturklab to help develop novel approaches to neutralize and eliminate residual viral proteins commonly observed in #LongCovid patients, particularly in the brain. Keep an eye out for our work!🧠💪🔬
Our new study shows that SARS-CoV-2 spike protein accumulates & persists in the body for years after infection, especially in the skull-meninges-brain axis, potentially driving long COVID. mRNA vaccines help but cannot stop it🔬🧠🦠🧵👇@cellhostmicrobe cell.com/cell-host-microbe/f…
Sam McIntyre retweeted
An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus
go.nature.com/4nAMi6g
Sam McIntyre retweeted
“AIDS once was a mysterious, predominantly fatal disease of healthy individuals. Now, it is a treatable and preventable infection.
The same could be true for Long Covid, if we aggressively invest in the research and the clinical system so urgently needed.”
foxnews.com/opinion/innovati…
Sam McIntyre retweeted
Pleased to share our latest COVID Mind Study @ Yale publication: "Vascular inflammation in neuropsychiatric long COVID" Elevated markers of endothelial adhesion in LC correlates with lower verbal fluency and learning.
doi.org/10.1016/j.bbih.2026.…
Sam McIntyre retweeted
Fascinating new research from @PlzSolveCFS: What is going on with T cells in Long COVID and ME/CFS? 🤔👇
In this talk, researchers
Dr. Liisa Selin, Dr. Ayano Kohlgruber, and Dr. Roshan Kumar discuss their newest work, arguing that dysfunctional T-cells are driving MECFS and Long COVID.
They examined the CD8+ T cells of patients with these diseases, and found signs of clonal expansion - which only happens when the immune system is chronically exposed to an antigen. 🦠
Clonal expansion can happen in response to a foreign antigen (such as a virus or bacteria), however it can also happen in autoimmunity, where the immune system has accidentally recognized part of the person's own body as "foreign."
They also identified signs of exhaustion in these T cells- meaning that they're becoming worn out trying to fight these antigens, whether they're foreign (as in the case of chronic infection) or self-antigens (as in autoimmunity).
In MECFS and LC patients, they found their CD8 tells were able to produce much lower levels of Interferon-gamma and TNF-a compared to healthy controls.🧪
Previously, Dr. Selin and other researchers had studied an experimental, nebulized treatment called Inspiritol (unfortunately it is not available to patients at this time).
In this new work, the team tested Inspiritol's effects on these exhausted T cells in-vitro, and found it was able to greatly improve the cells' function.
**Other Chronic Pathogens**
Dr. Selin explains that once you have the overactivation and subsequent exhaustion of the CD8+ T cells, it impairs the immune system's ability to keep other chronic pathogens that may be in the person's body under control. This is why patients with these diseases may have a reactivation of herpesviruses such as EBV, CMV, HHV-6, enteroviruses, tick-borne illnesses, and more.🦠
**Identifying T cell Targets**
In the future stage of the work, this team will use technology developed by Dr. Kumar and his company that seeks to identify exactly which pathogens these T-cells are targeting.
Knowing the cause of this abnormal clonal exhaustion will help us to understand exactly why this process is occurring, shedding light on the underlying cause of LC and MECFS.
✨It's pretty exciting to see these advances occurring! Although it may not always seem like it, we get closer to the answers every day!✨
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ALT Screenshot from presentation explaining their hypothesis. Dysfunctional T cells clonally expand in response to a foreign or self antigen. This causes maladaptive reprogramming of CD8 T cells and disease due to impaired and/or sustained immunity
NIH are launching a phase 1 trial of Cancer drug Keytruda for Long Covid.
It works by blocking the PD-1 receptor on T cells which releases the brake and reinvigorates them, boosting the immune systems ability to clear viral reservoirs
clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT…
Sam McIntyre retweeted
Simmaron publication shows mechanisms of #PEM in #ME! Our new findings show a lack of ATG13 inside cells induces macrophages to take on an inflammatory role, impairing myelin in muscles, in processes aggravated by exercise. #Longcovid @UWM @SpringerNature link.springer.com/article/10…
Sam McIntyre retweeted
Turn 36 today & I’ve spent my entire thirties with #LongCovid. When I turned 30 I was biking to work 10 miles a day, & since my mild covid infection — I struggle to walk more than a block or work more than a few hours a week.
Here’s 4 things I wish everyone knew: