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by landl0rd 251 days ago
It does imply AMPA antagonists or NAMs might be of interest to people with this problem, though. I wonder if high-dose L-theanine might be of interest; most of the -ampanel family antagonists are liable to abuse and a little sketchy regarding side effects and *NQX family aren't usable outside lab settings, so limited other options. Memantine might help but itself has anecdotal reports of inducing brain fog.

I'd also remark that their methodology has issues; we do not have a clear etiology or diagnostic criteria for "long covid" and its presentation. Participants had previously been infected (this is essentially everyone) and reported subjective "brain fog" type symptoms which is a terrible way to attempt to isolate anything about this "long covid". It's possible this is just a generalized syndrome that results from behavioral or lifestyle factors. I.e. we have no way to know what is "long covid" versus other things, no way to reliably trust patient history, and no way to know we are seeing that particular type of "brain fog".

1 comments

> It does imply AMPA antagonists or NAMs might be of interest to people with this problem, though

It does not necessarily.

For example, if the increased AMPA density is a counter-regulatory response to reduced baseline AMPA activation, further antagonizing the receptor system would worsen rather than improve the situation.

Possible, which is why I said "might be" and brought up that memantine seems to contribute positively to brain fog.