"Around June of 2020, "we noticed... that people were being released from the hospital, they were alive, but by no stretch of the imagination, was their immune system normal. And then we started hearing about patients... that were still having symptoms three and four months out again, that was in the early days. So we started investigating what their immune profile looked like. And then we developed a machine learning AI computer program. And what we did is we compared the immune profiles of acute COVID with, basically, long haulers. And it was completely different and abnormal."
There were other important observations: "the cells carried a COVID protein all over the body and caused inflammation... the cells have a propensity to bind the blood vessels through a pathway called fractalkine. "the cells are mobilized by exercise and to a person long haulers have exercise intolerance." But some victims may be suffering more from other ailments.
Here are more views of Patterson: "As we treat for four to six weeks, what we do when we restore the immune system and immune profile to normal, is then we start while they're on medication, increasing their exercise and activity. So we perturb their system, knowing that we're reducing a number of these COVID-containing cells, and we're keeping them from binding to blood vessels, which is causing the symptoms. So, we're increasing their activity, while on medication while we're following them. They will get better. [They] will get back to what you're used to doing, and this is not something you're going to have to deal with for a long time."
Patterson has published research documenting the finding of abnormal levels of cytokines - signaling inflammation in the body, and defining some 14 factors that could be found in blood.
Also noted was "these cells that contain COVID protein, go through the blood-brain barrier and cause vascular inflammation in the brain." This would explain many symptoms presumably, like brain fog.
Mother Jones investigative report
This January 2022 outstanding report is titled "Desperate Patients Are Shelling Out Thousands for a Long Covid Cure. Is It for Real?" Here are some key excerpts:
It first describes the ordeal of a long COVID sufferer named Owen.
"When Owen came down with Covid-19 in April 2021, he felt lucky to get away with a mild case. After a few days of a runny nose, he returned to his regular routine, including long sessions at the gym. But three weeks later, Owen, who was 25 at the time, "began to have trouble breathing. It got so bad one day that he collapsed in his kitchen. Later, at the emergency room, doctors searched for a cause but could find none, so they sent him home.
"In the weeks that followed, he was so exhausted that he couldn't get out of bed. He tried to work, but his thinking was fuzzy. His appetite was low, and he had trouble digesting even the smallest snacks. Doctors ran heart tests, ultrasounds, and blood counts that turned up nothing. Owen visited several clinics for long-haul Covid patients. He got vaccinated. He went through cognitive behavioral therapy, a psychological approach to managing symptoms. A doctor prescribed him a low dose of an anti-addiction medication that had shown some promise in addressing the brain fog. None of it helped. Over the next few months, Owen lost nearly 80 pounds. Desperate, he scoured the internet for answers."
Eventually, Owen after a lot of web searching, found that "A former Stanford virologist named Dr. Bruce Patterson had developed a special blood test to diagnose long Covid along with what he promised was a highly effective treatment regimen." He found entire social media groups devoted to Patterson and his diagnostic company, IncellDX. "'I am HUGELY thankful to them', gushed one fan in a Reddit group. For the first time in this nightmare, doctors are telling me that they have things to try that they think may help me.'
"Patterson's pitch was impressive: Owen would send a few vials of blood to IncellDX's lab, where technicians would look for evidence of elevated levels of cytokines, proteins that are thought to play an important role in the body's immune response. The higher the patient's level of certain cytokines, they suggested, the worse the case of long Covid. Based on those results, Patterson's team of doctors would assign Owen a 'long-hauler score' that indicated the severity of his disease. Owen would follow up with an IncellDX doctor to discuss the results and treatment. If Owen's doctor wouldn't prescribe the drugs--which was likely, since many of them weren't approved to treat Covid--Patterson's team would connect him with a special network of doctors who would.
"Owen had some reservations. He knew that the process could be pricey and that his insurance probably wouldn't cover all of it. But he was desperate. 'I was pretty suicidal,' he recalls. 'I was just so done with all of this.' So, after paying a few hundred dollars for the test, he sent off his vials of blood to IncellDX and waited for the results."
The Owen story seems typical of many long COVID sufferers.
Also noted in this report is that there are "dozens of long-haul Covid online support groups" where "hundreds of thousands of members congregate to offer encouragement and commiserate over a dizzying list of ghastly symptoms. Some haven't been able to get out of bed for a year or more. Others find digesting food so difficult that they have to use a feeding tube to stay alive. Many have had to stop working because they can no longer think clearly. Then there are the reports of people who have been so tormented by their experiences that they have died by suicide."
The great difficulty in treating long COVID is emphasized. "Even at new long-Covid clinics at major medical centers, physicians admit that their approach involves treating individual problems--inhalers for breathing difficulty, for example, sleep aids for insomnia, or cognitive behavioral therapy for brain fog. Dr. Benjamin Abramoff, a physician who specializes in rehabilitation and directs the Post-Covid Assessment and Recovery Clinic at Penn Medicine, says the spectrum of symptoms he sees is 'very, very broad.' As for treatments, so far, he says, 'There's no one size fits all.'" Wise words.
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