Pregnancy associated with *less* Long Covid.
Your "Five on Friday" lead story for May 31, 2024...
We are back with “Five on Friday", the feature where Inside Medicine behaves like an actual medical/health/science newsletter. Also, please vote in the poll at the end!
If you value this feature—and Inside Medicine in general…
Here we go…
Item 1: Pregnancy decreases the risk of Long Covid?
A new study in eClinicalMedicine (a Lancet imprint) suggests that pregnancy may be somewhat protective against the development of Long Covid.
This may seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense to me. Recently, I wrote about my pet theory that Long Covid might actually be a pathologic extreme of a “normal” immune function; that is, our bodies want to remember recent infections, and we intentionally keep remnants of a recent virus around to keep the immune response factory going. When this happens in the extreme—too much of it, for longer than is optimal—Long Covid emerges.
Pregnancy changes the immune system in complex ways. On one hand, the body wants to protect the fetus from infections. On the other, an immune system that is too active could actually attack the fetus. So, it would not surprise me one bit if we someday learned that Long Covid is less likely during pregnancy because the mother’s immune system is actually a little less interested in keeping viral remnants around for far longer than the virus itself.
It’s kind of perfect: A slightly blunted immune response would simultaneously explain why pregnancy poses high risks for pregnant women and fetuses (these are well-documented facts) and that Long Covid appears less likely to emerge from it.
Sure, I could be wrong. But, if my little theory ever becomes accepted or popular, everyone will say it was obvious all along. I’m telling you now that this notion is currently non-obvious to most people. Flag planted (but I’m willing to be proven wrong).
Item 2: Peanut allergies are preventable.
Scientists are not exactly sure why peanut allergies have increased in recent decades, but researchers have shown a way to reverse that trend: early exposure. Several years ago, an important trial showed that exposing children to peanuts starting in infancy decreased the likelihood of peanut allergies later in childhood.
A follow-up report recently issued in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that the effect held up over a decade later. Early exposure to peanuts decreased subsequent peanut allergies by over 70% over that time.
Simple! Effective. We love it.
Item 3: Cities and pandemics.
Infectious diseases like cities. The reasons may be obvious—the density and high population turnover. It should not surprise us that New York City had such a terrible early experience with Covid. But we need to learn from that experience, argues New York’s health commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan, in a new piece in Foreign Policy. Those lessons should be heeded by locales in the US and elsewhere. In fact, the WHO invited New York to attend its annual general assembly in Geneva the last two years. That makes sense. New York City has a population that is greater than around half the member nations of the WHO. While there are surely things that a country like Malta can tell us about public and global health, I think the New York City experience is probably more applicable to many of the problems we might face in the future. So it’s good to see the WHO embracing that.
Item 4: A brief update on me.
As you all know, I have been home with Covid-19 since late Saturday evening. I expected that I’d have a somewhat worse bout than average, because I’ve always had very strong side effect reactions to the vaccines. My body just does not like that spike protein! As of today, Day 6, my rapid tests are still incredibly positive. After not being able to do much of anything a few days ago due to intense fatigue (and body aches), I’m now able to do things like write Inside Medicine a few hours per day. But, yeah. Not a fun week. I’ll write more this weekend. Thank you all again for your wonderful messages of support!
Item 5: Poll of the Week.
Here are the results from last week’s poll. Interesting!
Item 5a: Poll of the Week for this week!
I am hoping that this is the worst bout of Covid I ever have to endure. Let me crowdsource what I might expect in the future…
I realize that these options might not cover every situation. Perhaps it was “as bad, but shorter,” or “not as bad, but longer.” That’s what the Comments section is for!
That’s it. Your “Friday Five!”
Feedback! Do you like the “Five on Friday” format? Have any ideas for next week’s Poll of the Week? Any great articles you read elsewhere that you want to share with the Inside Medicine community? Other musings or thoughts?
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Feel better!!
5 on Friday tweaks my curiosity in the happiest way.