<
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/19/people-with-hypermobility-may-be-more-prone-to-long-covid-study-suggests>
"People with excessively flexible joints may be at heightened risk of long
Covid and persistent fatigue, research suggests.
Hypermobility is where some or all of a person’s joints have an unusually large
range of movement due to differences in the structure of their connective
tissues that support, protect and give structure to organs, joints and other
tissues.
Up to 20% of adults are hypermobile and many of them are completely healthy.
Hypermobility can even be beneficial, with many musicians and athletes having
very flexible joints. However, it can also create problems, such as an
increased propensity to pain, fatigue, joint injuries and stomach or digestive
problems.
Dr Jessica Eccles, from Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and her colleagues
had been investigating a potential link between hypermobility, myalgic
encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and fibromyalgia (a
condition that causes pain all over the body), when the Covid pandemic hit.
“We started thinking, if hypermobility is potentially a factor in ME/CFS, is it
also a factor in long Covid?” Eccles said.
She teamed up with researchers from King’s College London and examined data
from 3,064 participants in the Covid symptom study (now the Zoe health study)
to see if they had hypermobile joints, had fully recovered from their last bout
of Covid, and if they were experiencing persistent fatigue.
The research, published in
BMJ Public Health, found that people with
hypermobile joints were about 30% more likely to say they hadn’t fully
recovered from Covid-19 than those with normal joints, and were significantly
more likely to be affected by high levels of fatigue.
Although the study doesn’t prove that hypermobility caused their illness, there
is a plausible mechanism through which it could contribute symptoms such as
fatigue, brain fog and postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS) – where people’s
heart rates rapidly increase when they stand up."
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: March 21, 2024
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-100819438
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
