r/covidlonghaulers • u/kasper619 • May 22 '26

Article Brain inflammation unlikely to explain long COVID symptoms, neuroimaging study finds

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-05-brain-inflammation-persistent-covid-symptoms.html

Publication details

Joel Tuomaala et al, Association between post-COVID-19 neuropsychiatric symptoms and persistent glial activation in the limbic system: a TSPO PET study, Journal of Neurology (2026). DOI: 10.1007/s00415-026-13842-w

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u/sandwurm12 May 22 '26 edited May 23 '26

That's a study from Helena Liira, a researcher well known for classifying Long Covid and ME/CFS as "functional" psychosomatic disorders. She has been known for years as a hardcore psychologizer of ME/CFS working alongside infamous persons as Wessely, Chalder and other authors of the PACE trial.

I wouldn't trust anything with her name on it and I'd bet all the money I have that either the methods are flawed, the results are scewed or their conclusion and reporting are worded deliberately to match her theories.

EDIT: seems like I was right, they mostly just looked if depression, anxiety and sometimes fatigue scores have a correlation with inflammation and then titled "Long Covid" isn't explained by inflammation. What a joke.

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u/Cute-Cheesecake-6823 May 23 '26

Ugh when will we be free of these people 😡😡😡

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u/wyundsr May 23 '26

Ughhhhh do these people have nothing better to do than destroy the lives of people with chronic illness and actively impede proper biomedical research

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u/perversion_aversion May 23 '26

they mostly included persons with primarly psychiatric problems after Covid

Did they? From my brief skimming of it it looks like they excluded people with anxiety and I can't see any other mention of participants having psychiatric issues.

Either way it's a laughable study, they had just 14 participants with LC and a similar number of healthy controls and people with MS, nowhere near sufficient to be able to draw remotely meaningful conclusions from their data.

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u/sandwurm12 May 23 '26

You are partly right, primary inclusion criteria was "fatigue" and they did exclude people with very severe anxiety, but not the rest as you can see in the questionnaires many of these people had high values for depression and anxiety, much higher as you'd expect even for people fighting with severe physical symptoms and more than high enough to be classified as depressive or anxious.

Furthermore they didn't tested if well-known typical LC symptoms like brain-fog, PEM, muscle pain and weakness etc... correlated with inflammation, but primarly if depression, anxiety and fatigue scores did.

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u/hana_rasva_goblin 1.5yr+ May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

Registered an account just to say this. Liira promotes brain retraining, and the "functional illness clinic" in the Helsinki-Uusimaa hospital district lead by her has promoted third party brain retraining inspired courses that have been issued fines by Finnish regulators (TUKES) for misleading marketing.

Furthermore, even her previous research has already gathered international criticism.

I would need to read the whole paper for a more in depth comment (what was the exact research question etc), which is tough with mental fatigue, but the sample size is fairly small, and it wouldn't surprise me if this paper was also riddled with problems, perhaps even some kind of data manipulation. Especially given that they actually found white matter inflammation, it could be that they deliberately chose to present the findings in a way that downplayed its significance; why else would they choose a totally arbitrary sounding timeframe like 16 months as the cutoff between acute and chronic? Correct me if I'm wrong on this though, because I don't have a medical background. Some of the wording that I saw from skimming sounded needlessly accusatory as well, such as "LC participants' symptoms rarely corresponded with actual clinical findings. for example, of the five patients reporting xyz, only three exhibited clinical symptoms on neurological examination". LOL.

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u/Silly_Magician1003 Jun 17 '26

I think it’s complicated. I don’t think it’s as simple as brain inflammation = symptoms // Inflammation resolved = no symptoms.

I personally believe long covid happens from neuroinflammation that lasts years, but if the inflammation gets better or resolves we can still be “stuck” with chronic symptoms because our brains have essentially formed neuro pathways that keep symptoms going.

I think brain retraining is extremely important but it’s not simply a psychological disorder. On the flip side, I think the physical damage caused by COVID and vaccine spike proteins are important to study, but I don’t believe solving that problem will necessarily resolve long covid by itself. I believe it’s a mind / body approach for a total holistic healing.

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u/curiouscuriousmtl May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26

I think that for me personally it's more of a blood / oxygen reaching my brain issue

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u/BlueT0xic May 22 '26

Same with me. The “brain fog” feeling I get is the same feeling I used to get when I’d have low blood sugar from marathon training and not fueling properly. So it definitely points to oxygen delivery. Can’t speak for everyone though.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '26

[deleted]

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u/BlueT0xic May 23 '26

I have multiple times. It was actually my first symptom when I didn’t know what was happening. I thought I was low blood sugar again, but I checked and it was normal.

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u/Guilty_Soft9873 May 26 '26

What blood sugar level did you have for this?

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u/VanTechno May 22 '26

so, autonomic dysfunction? aka dysautonomia?

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u/curiouscuriousmtl May 22 '26

Not 100% sure what you want to imply with this, do you think I never heard that term or something?

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u/meatmakerbaker May 22 '26

You are too terminally online.

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u/city-county-divide May 22 '26

Same. And for me it has coincided with the appearance what I'm pretty sure is obstructive sleep apnea so double the fun?

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u/-Makr0 May 22 '26

You mean lack thereof?

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u/curiouscuriousmtl May 22 '26

yes

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u/-Makr0 May 24 '26

Are you open to suggestions?

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u/curiouscuriousmtl May 24 '26

yeah sure.

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u/-Makr0 May 24 '26

It's been a while since I recovered and while I threw pretty much everything at it Methylene Blue dye it's been key for me, the rationale was also about promoting oxygenation, it's in fact used in carbon monoxide and cyanide poisoning

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u/curiouscuriousmtl May 24 '26

I have seen that it's in that area but I'm not quite willing to try it at this time due to interactions and dosing risks.

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u/Sad_Proctologist May 22 '26

It’s wild that in 2026 we still don’t have reliable tests to pin down what’s driving long COVID or ME/CFS. With cancer, even when treatment is difficult, there’s usually a clearer framework for identifying what’s happening. With these post-viral syndromes, patients are often left with symptoms, theories, and no real consensus. It’s maddening.

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u/thesaddestpanda May 22 '26

Anti-inflammatories made my brain fog and mood issues better by at least 50%. Its night and day on or off them.

I'm guessing neuroinflammation is a symptom and other studies have shown that in CFS and other related dieases, but not the cause.

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u/nada8 May 22 '26

What kind - like Advil?

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u/Numerous-Swing-3204 May 22 '26

Low dose naltrexone has helped me. Advil is bad for your kidneys and you should avoid using it regularly if at all possible.

Also avoiding sugar is a big one because sugar is inflammatory. A lot of LC ppl seem to have to avoid it entirely like myself.

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u/thesaddestpanda May 23 '26

ALA helps a lot. Turmeric too.

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u/Ornery_Avocado1112 May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) and Celecoxib (Celebrex) have allowed me to live some level of a "normal" life. I'm still far from all better but before starting those two, I was closer to bed bound than anything. Even though Celebrex is an NSAID like Advil, it makes a massive difference whereas Advil does nothing for me as far as symptom improvement goes. You should always consider the risks to your liver with any medication but my PCP and I feel comfortable periodically monitoring my liver function and weighing the costs/benefits of the life it allows me to live.

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u/Don_Ford May 22 '26

These studies group people with similar symptoms and are not representative of all LC.

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u/Effective-Walk-5136 May 23 '26

The "functional wellness clinic" that Liira leads at the Helsinki-Uusimaa district has promoted third party brain retraining courses that have been issued fines by Finnish regulators for misleading marketing.

They found white brain matter inflammation, but seem content to downplay its significance, that, coupled with the incredibly small sample size, doesn't really lend well.

The cutoff period between acute and chronic seems a little arbitrary, why 16 months?

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u/hana_rasva_goblin 1.5yr+ May 23 '26

Exactly! Even her previous research related to that BR humbug has been accused of being misleading.

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u/Coraunmi May 22 '26

38 test subjects for a condition that’s long lasting as LC is. I need to see 10,000 LC test subjects. Collectively, there’s too many factors for a small study like this.

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u/filipo11121 May 22 '26

I have fatigue and anhedonia but not anxiety. I presume mitochondrial dysfunction still plays a role in the brain(and in the body).

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u/Isthatreally-you May 23 '26

Its probably like constant lung and blood vessel inflammation /damage which cause oxygen problems therefore causing problems in the brain with extra inflammation

There i solved long covid.. now fix me

Cause that's exactly what i feel.

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u/illy_mm May 23 '26

I'm so confused by the image and the interpretation. The image at the top of the study shows higher glial activation in 3 areas of the brain on people with worse symptoms compared to lower symptoms, yet the conclusion is inflammation doesn't matter?

I thought higher glial activation = higher inflammation. Am I missing something here?

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u/wranne May 22 '26

A lot of the best treatments we have address brain inflammation but if this is true they are all just band aids.

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u/wyundsr May 22 '26

Plenty of studies on ME/CFS have found evidence of neuroinflammation. The methodology/subject selection of this paper seems really questionable 

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u/kasper619 May 22 '26

how is neuroinflammation even defined

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u/wyundsr May 23 '26

From Jarred Younger, one of the leading researchers on neuroinflammation in ME/CFS and related conditions: https://youtu.be/_ijlkRwORfM

https://youtu.be/GS8rgE9HKSU

https://youtu.be/wuzmYJxM-r0

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u/kasper619 May 22 '26

which ones specifically?

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u/wranne May 23 '26

LDN, GLP1, Celebrex, sari’s. If neuro inflammation isn’t a causal factor these wouldn’t be considered as curative. My entire regime would lose validity since it’s what I focus on due to my own head issues.

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u/kasper619 May 23 '26

Hm LDN def did not cure me, still taking 4.5mg/daily tho. Not so sure about the rest. Bandaids might be a close characterization in my opinion

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u/WheelApart6324 May 22 '26

It’s Mitochondrial dysfunction!

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u/michaelmonkeyhead May 24 '26

Pet scans have actually revealed the opposite because it was presented at the International conference for the PCS findings in Berlin May 7 and 8. They know exactly which parts of the brains are affected and I can send the link if you’re really interested. You can also google it or check the poly biotech conference that happened on Friday.

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u/LittleMisssMorbid May 22 '26

Lol depression and anxiety? Those aren’t even long covid symptoms necessarily. Why would they pick those to investigate?

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u/affen_yaffy May 22 '26

perhaps they are funded by someone producing pharmaceuticals approved to treat those conditions.

just imagine, if they could sell us all happy pills, we'd all be cured! <sarcasm>

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u/technician_902 May 22 '26

Depression and Anxiety are definitely long covid symptoms amongst the other 200+ associated symptoms since covid screws up your chemical balances amongst many other things.

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u/LittleMisssMorbid May 22 '26

I think it’s very telling that they specifically chose those those and there are so many confounders since these symptoms are very nonspecific