Autopsy Study Finds Replicating SARS-CoV-2 in the Hearts of Long Covid

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tthenerdhead about 14 hours ago 27 commentsRead Article on my.uscap.org

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mchusma•about 3 hours ago

After seeing studies like this, and how the shingles vaccine reduces dimensia, I have become increasingly convinced that it’s bad to get almost any disease, even transiently. I used to think that it was kind of good to train your immune system (kind of whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger). I no longer believe that. I believe that diseases often cause unknown effects and it’s better to avoid disease entirely, that vaccines are actually more beneficial than current studies show in this regard, and new universal vaccines to prevent the common cold and flu will likely have significant health span improvements over time beyond the acute prevention of symptoms.

M95D•12 minutes ago

You can and should train your immune system, but not by fighting the enemy. Train it with a sparring partner - a vaccine.

Many people think that viruses are as benign as common flu (influenza), or common cold (rhinoviruses), because that what they experienced themselves and parents and schools don't do a good job of explaining just how bad some diseases are. (To "protect" the children, perhaps?)

But most viruses are not as "polite" as the flu or a cold. All herpesviruses (chickenpox, classic herpesviruses type 1 and 2, papilomavirus, Epstein-Barr, CMV) stay with you forever. So does HIV, hepatitis C (until recently introduced efective treatment), sometimes hepatitis B, some types (the bad types) of papillomaviruses, etc. There are so many of them.

And there are permanet bacterial infections and parasites too: Mycobacterum leprae (rare now), and M. tubeculosis (where I live most people are infected, but don't manifest the disease and are not contagious), Helicobacter pylori (something like 2/3 of all people in the world are infected), malaria (curable, but many people don't know they have it), Toxoplasma (infects all warm blooded animals including birds, and many people have it - in their brain).

There are some viruses (like HIV) that insert themselves into our cell's DNA, and if they infect our reproductive cells, we pass them on to our children just like any other gene. It happened a lot in our evolution. ~10% of our ordinary human genome is made of viruses. Ancient viruses, no longer functional, but some of their genes we repurposed them and made them work for us instead. If you count transposons (not technically viruses, but they can/could move in and out of DNA, switch places, just like text cut-and-paste, taking with them nearby genes), then it's more like 50% of our DNA.

ZpJuUuNaQ5•43 minutes ago

>I used to think that it was kind of good to train your immune system (kind of whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger). I no longer believe that.

Well, that's essentially what vaccines do, anyway, except that they train the immune system without requiring you to go through the full disease. As a side note, I developed myocarditis after a COVID vaccine which damaged heart tissue and caused an AV block.

grayhatter•39 minutes ago

I'm interested in your perspective, Do you think you're more mad you got the vaccine, or more greatful that you did because an organic infection would have done more damage?

realo•13 minutes ago

The more interesting question is whether he would have got the myocarditis if he had not taken the vaccine.

I think he would have. And might have died of COVID on top of it.

Enginerrrd•16 minutes ago

That’s impossible to know either way.

PaulKeeble•about 2 hours ago

I am now pretty certain every virus we have ever caught is just smouldering in our body somewhere constantly held in check by the immune system. We seem to just accumulate ever increasing issues until our body can't cope anymore and become symptomatic with damage and then ultimately die. We have had a huge blindspot for the damage viruses are doing to people, I doubt any infection leaves us.

The research from Covid is just finding so much evidence for tissue resident viral infection and prior work on ME/CFS autopsies showed other viruses doing similar in the brain. Catching anything is bad for our health.

jupiter_flyby•about 2 hours ago

For Long COVID and the brain follow Danielle Beckman: https://bsky.app/profile/daniellebeckman.bsky.social

underdeserver•about 2 hours ago

Isn't this exact idea a theme in Asimov's books?

I feel like doctors and physiology researchers have known this for some time.

thenerdhead•about 3 hours ago

having posted on this topic for years, your comment is the first I’ve seen come to this rational conclusion. usually people double down on their original perspective

st-keller•about 2 hours ago

I came to the same conclusion and normally i don’t write about it. Beiing one of the few who pays 250€ to get my family vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 every year here in Germany (i have to pay because our „StIKo“ doesn’t recommend the vaccination) kind of makes me hesitant to talk about it.

thenerdhead•about 2 hours ago

thats strange as I thought Germany is the one investing over the next decade in these conditions?

MrBuddyCasino•about 2 hours ago

This is why I‘m excited for the attempt to vaccinate against the common cold and influenza: https://blog.interceptfund.com/p/ending-respiratory-infectio...

throw-the-towel•about 2 hours ago

s/dimensia/dementia ?

Animats•about 2 hours ago

That's probably assuming too much persistence for some infections. Virus detection in autopsies has been around for a while.[1] But it's not routine. At least HIV, malaria, yellow fever, rabies, and hepatitis have been tested. So there's data to look at, not just belief.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266652472...

cyanydeez•about 2 hours ago

ok, so posit this is true; are you going to now become a bubble boy?

rdmirza•about 1 hour ago

It's established that COVID can persist in tissue/blood - particularly in immunocompromised patients - and is associated with long COVID [1]. This abstract only reports a cut-off of >60 days from COVID infection, so it's hard to know how many of these deceased patients are truly outside the acute infection phase.

Although this research area is the most promising avenue for long COVID -- wrt biologic rationale -- the major anti-viral trials for long COVID were negative.

STOP-PASC trial [2] and PAXLC [3] were both 15-day courses of Paxlovid and showed no benefit across patient reported outcomes.

The real question however, is whether anti-virals have benefit in patients with active viral replication. Like only cases of long COVID can be implicated to viral persistence.

STOP-PASC did collect stool PCR at baseline, but every tested sample was negative. PAX LC later reported a exploratory biomarker analysis of 82 PAX LC participants did measure circulating SARS-CoV-2 S1 and full-length Spike, and wasn't powered to find a difference. Notably, spike presence doesn't necessarily mean active viral replication [4].

As an aside, mchusma's post is probably right. Viral disease is not being associated with more and more long term diseases. EBV is being linked to MS, cervical cancer to HPV, and so on.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147330992... [2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar... [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40188838 [4] www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.24.26347001v1.full

realo•about 3 hours ago

The science is interesting but I must admit I learned a new word today.

A deceased person is also a decedent. Adjective vs noun. Cool.

jgalt212•about 3 hours ago

Yes, but deceased is also a noun. The Economist's Style Guide would not approve.

nerdsniper•about 4 hours ago

I'd be curious to look for any investigation into whether extended paxlovid treatment fixes a significant subset of long COVID.

thenerdhead•about 3 hours ago

they’ve done 15 days all null and the 25 day one was null but has some unique labs they tested but haven’t posted yet.

Paxlovid does something to antiviral genes and shows there’s something there though in secondary analysis (not posted but has been presented at conferences)

sadly Paxlovid doesn’t actually get rid of the viral pieces remaining and a PROTAC or other therapy might be necessary to degrade the proteins.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-025-02539-7

liamrosen•about 2 hours ago

Yeah, it seems that most people don't have active viral replication which is the only thing that Paxlovid works for (it literally jams up the "scissors" that cut the viral data for replication).

It seems to work in a small subset, but that's about it.

internet_user•about 9 hours ago

Has this been found in other tissues?

thenerdhead•about 3 hours ago

strongest evidence so far in gut and immune cells for living organisms.

They did find it in the brain of one patient when doing an unrelated procedure at the NIH. That could be due to many things though. General findings around the CSF/brain have been negative.

Autopsy - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05542-y

Long covid - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

Also this exists in both children and adults.

npunt•about 5 hours ago

Iirc yes. Viral persistence and viral reservoirs are the terms to search for

brewcejener•about 1 hour ago

So did these people take the poisonous shot? Is that covered?

juggert8•about 1 hour ago

I've had my 17th booster so I should be safe, right? I mean, I understand the vaccine doesn't stop infection or transmission but I heckin love science!