In the case of Covid-19, the scientists found that this reactivity persisted even at seven weeks after infection. One consequence is that they can begin eating away at needed neurons or other brain cells, which further disrupts the brain’s homeostasis. In response to these stimuli, microglia can become perpetually reactive. For the mice, this infection cleared up within one week, and they did not lose weight. Then they shot a bit of virus up the mice’s noses to cause infection, controlling the amount and delivery so that the virus was limited to the respiratory system. This receptor is the point of entry for the Covid-causing virus, allowing it to bind to the cell. Using a viral vector, Iwasaki’s group introduced the human ACE2 receptor into cells in the trachea and lungs of the mice. A mouse model is engineered as a close stand-in for a human, and this experiment was meant to mimic the experience of a person with a mild Covid-19 infection. Her group had already established a mouse model of Covid-19, thanks to their Biosafety Level 3 clearance to work with the virus. In September 2020, Monje reached out to Iwasaki, an immunologist. “The same symptoms of impaired attention, memory, speed of information processing, dis-executive function-it really clinically looks just like the ‘chemo fog’ that people experienced and that we’d been studying.” “Very quickly, as reports of cognitive impairment started to come out, it was clear that it was a very similar syndrome,” she says. Living with those symptoms was, in her words, “hell on earth.”įor the past 20 years, Monje, a neuro-oncologist, had been trying to understand the neurobiology behind chemotherapy-induced cognitive symptoms-similarly known as “chemo fog.” When Covid-19 emerged as a major immune-activating virus, she worried about the potential for similar disruption. The high-level writing required for her job was out of the question. “I spent most of 2021 making decisions like: Is this the day where I get a shower, or I go up and microwave myself a frozen dinner?” Guy recalls. It was accompanied by a loss of mental sharpness, part of a suite of sometimes hard-to-pin-down symptoms that are often referred to as Covid-19 “brain fog,” a general term for sluggish or fuzzy thinking. Four weeks later, when Guy had recovered enough to go back to work full-time, she woke up one day with an overwhelming fatigue that just never went away. While the initial infection was not fun, what followed was worse. Things were looking “really, really good,” she says-until she got Covid-19. She could get up early in the mornings to work on creative projects. She loved her job and the people she worked with as a communications manager for a conservation nonprofit. Her health was the best it had ever been. Allison Guy was having a great start to 2021.
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