Very cool. Surprising that having more AMPA receptors would lead to decreased cognition, as learning & memory is hypothesized to particularly involve processes that increase the number of in-position AMPA receptors.
In biology, cause and effect do not work the way they work in other fields. Effect is highly context-specific and things often work in the opposite direction than you might assume.
There's so much we don't know about this yet. It's great to see new knowledge being generated! I had Covid last February (vaccinated and boosted, thankfully). It was a mild course, but I wound up sensitized to caffeine for three to four months after.
I normally drink 100-150mg/day, but I had to cut that back to 50-60mg and only in the morning. It seems to have passed, so I'm back on my drip.
The headline overstates the findings. The researchers aren't saying that this is the underlying basis of COVID brain fog. They hypothesized that AMPA receptors might be involved. They compared Long COVID patients to controls and found a difference.
This doesn't mean that AMPA receptors are the root cause of post-COVD brain fog, nor does it necessarily mean that drugs modulating AMPA receptors could reverse it. It only shows that this is one of the changes observed in patients reporting post-COVID brain fog. It could be a side effect of some other change or it could be part of a long cascade of changes.
It also needs to be replicated further. I've read at least at dozen headlines claiming to have found the underlying cause of COVID brain fog in the past year and all of them pointed to different biomarkers.
Consider this another piece of the puzzle, not a discovery of the underlying mechanism.
It'd be nice to find out if there's any overlap with the "brain fog" from fibromyalgia. My college years would have been far less torturous if I could have lived without that, even if I still had to deal with the pain.
It doesn’t say root cause, or drug target. It doesn’t say reverse or cure. It quite specifically doesn’t say “the basis”. The word basis doesn’t have to refer to one root cause. It could be something foundational, but there can be many elements of a foundation. It certainly isn’t the entire structure.
I’d argue it’s quite tame as academic press releases go.
It does imply AMPA antagonists or NAMs might be of interest to people with this problem, though. I wonder if high-dose L-theanine might be of interest; most of the -ampanel family antagonists are liable to abuse and a little sketchy regarding side effects and *NQX family aren't usable outside lab settings, so limited other options. Memantine might help but itself has anecdotal reports of inducing brain fog.
I'd also remark that their methodology has issues; we do not have a clear etiology or diagnostic criteria for "long covid" and its presentation. Participants had previously been infected (this is essentially everyone) and reported subjective "brain fog" type symptoms which is a terrible way to attempt to isolate anything about this "long covid". It's possible this is just a generalized syndrome that results from behavioral or lifestyle factors. I.e. we have no way to know what is "long covid" versus other things, no way to reliably trust patient history, and no way to know we are seeing that particular type of "brain fog".
Interesting! I feel I’ve been kinda foggy in my head since I quit smoking a year or two before covid and it then got worse with the pandemic. And I’ve felt there’s been more effect from a night out with party smoking than just seeing an old friend. Might need to try my own home grown snuff when it’s done and not just give it away.
Take it how you will but I had brain fog and greatly diminished sense of smell for like 4 years and then for unrelated reasons decided to try some methylene blue as a supplement, started with a minuscule dose and within a week my sense of smell was fully restored and the brain fog was reduced to “normal levels”.
From the paper's abstract: "A partial least squares model trained on the index of AMPAR density data demonstrated high diagnostic accuracy, achieving 100% sensitivity and 91.2% specificity." That seems to mean there's a diagnostic test now.
In the unknown chemical factory of the brain it is very difficult to dealinate the begin and consequent steps of all degenerative diseases: Alzheimer's - Parkinson's, chronic fatigue syndrome - post-Covid, schizophrenia- autism etc. At most it is possible to discover an intermediate step.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 36.0 ms ] threadJust a shot in the dark here, I'm just some guy on the internet, not a microbiologist or doctor.
I normally drink 100-150mg/day, but I had to cut that back to 50-60mg and only in the morning. It seems to have passed, so I'm back on my drip.
This doesn't mean that AMPA receptors are the root cause of post-COVD brain fog, nor does it necessarily mean that drugs modulating AMPA receptors could reverse it. It only shows that this is one of the changes observed in patients reporting post-COVID brain fog. It could be a side effect of some other change or it could be part of a long cascade of changes.
It also needs to be replicated further. I've read at least at dozen headlines claiming to have found the underlying cause of COVID brain fog in the past year and all of them pointed to different biomarkers.
Consider this another piece of the puzzle, not a discovery of the underlying mechanism.
It doesn’t say root cause, or drug target. It doesn’t say reverse or cure. It quite specifically doesn’t say “the basis”. The word basis doesn’t have to refer to one root cause. It could be something foundational, but there can be many elements of a foundation. It certainly isn’t the entire structure.
I’d argue it’s quite tame as academic press releases go.
Which can still be extremely useful, for targeting further investigation.
On a long covid news article? What are the chances!
I'd also remark that their methodology has issues; we do not have a clear etiology or diagnostic criteria for "long covid" and its presentation. Participants had previously been infected (this is essentially everyone) and reported subjective "brain fog" type symptoms which is a terrible way to attempt to isolate anything about this "long covid". It's possible this is just a generalized syndrome that results from behavioral or lifestyle factors. I.e. we have no way to know what is "long covid" versus other things, no way to reliably trust patient history, and no way to know we are seeing that particular type of "brain fog".
I vape like a fiend and I'm probably never going to stop
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11336094/
I would be curious if these markers could result from the same problems, or might indicate a complete separate root cause.