Gut connection

Some researchers are saying there is a large connection between gut health and covid outcomes. They posit that the virus initially goes to the lung, then to the gut (intestines), then back up to the lung to cause issues while also remaining in the gut. And that those with less healthy gut microbiome are at increased risk because the the gut acts as a sort of reservoir for the virus and/or the spike protein.

Some factors backing up this hypothesis: we know that older people have worse outcomes with this virus. There is also increasing research that shows gut-brain connection for diseases like Alzheimers, which again happens in older people. Also, post-pandemic rates of norovirus remain to be abnormally high, especially in older people. Norovirus is known to affect the gut.

We also see that post-pandemic, people's immune system appears to have been weakened: all sorts of viruses/pathogens are causing abnormally higher infection and severity rates post-pandemic, and this has not stopped even though it has been many years now since everyone was infected with covid.

There are more studies that are showing viral persistence in those with long covid, recent ones show the virus and/or the spike protein can persist in the gut.

Obesity was a hugely relevant comorbidity in terms of poor covid outcome. Again, those with obesity would be expected to have poor gut health, as things like sugar and lack of probiotics can upset the gut microbiome.

One doctor is recently hypothesizing that there is also another factor in terms of poor covid outcome, which is "G6PD" deficiency, which is most common in populations of Africa, and that this reduce body's ability to prevent covid related clots. Note that African Americans had the worse outcome in term of severe covid: 1% of USA's African American entire population (all ages) was wiped out by covid. Though there could also be additional reasons for this such as lower vitamin D levels and higher obesity rates.

I pushed chatGPT and it boiled down the main reasons of issues with covid to the following 2 processes:

For the first point, it seems like the immune system response can be related to the gut health. This makes sense because body parts are connected and complex and unlikely to work in isolation. So it could be that poor gut health contributes to the poor or maladaptive immune response. And keep in mind people with severe acute covid tend to have higher long covid rates as well, indicating a connection.

For the second point, vascular injury, this may also be connected to or exacerbated by gut health. Again, studies are showing the virus and/or spike protein can persist in the gut. So if it is persisting there, it can perhaps act as a reservoir and since it enters the blood it can also spread and damage other parts of the body with blood vessels. This could be why people without severe acute covid (the cytokine storm) can also have long covid.

Then I pushed chatGPT to show why covid causes more severe illness than flu:

Again, point 1 can be related to gut, if the gut is indeed acting as a reservoir. Point 2 I have heard a doctor say before, that for some reasons covid can "hide" in a way initially that takes long for the immune system to recognize it. They were saying that is why for the original strain it took 8 days for clinical deterioration to occur. It is supposed to be related to interferon.

So the take away would be to improve gut health, probably through diet. Though once you have long covid, I am not sure to what extent diet based solutions will be sufficient. It would probably need some therapeutics as well. So therapeutic research should focus on gut health: perhaps how to more quickly improve gut health, how to restore killing of good bacteria after covid kills them, and how to remove the virus and/or the spike protein from the gut.