@Gjallarhornet@mastodon.nu

I debated whether this is worthy of comment or not and I thank you @Gjallarhornet@mastodon.nu for sharing it...but I guess this is part of the problem with AI generated articles. I may be arguing semantics, but...

It's not a "breakthrough" in COVID research, per se. All the researchers from Manchester are saying is that they linked the monocytes to fatigue, thus the title of the actual paper:

"Severe fatigue as symptom of long COVID is characterized by increased expression of inflammatory genes in monocytes, increased serum pro-inflammatory cytokines, and increased CD8+ T-lymphocytes: A putative dysregulation of the immune-brain axis, the coagulation process, and auto-inflammation to explain the diversity of long COVID symptoms"

Monocytes as a focus of COVID research and possible therapeutics has a lot of articles going back a couple of years now. Here's just a few:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41385-021-00482-8

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8471575/

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210628/Differences-in-monocyte-subsets-between-severe-COVID-19-and-long-COVID.aspx

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220331/Study-determines-the-molecular-signatures-of-monocytes-and-regulatory-T-cells-in-the-circulating-blood-of-COVID-19-patients.aspx

It's a good step forward and hopefully it does help develop treatments.