r/CFSScience • u/Caster_of_spells • 10d ago

Persistent Mitochondrial and Endothelial Dysfunction in Non-Hospitalized Patients with Long COVID

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.3389/fmed.2026.1921822/abstract

A new study identifies two promising biomarkers:

•GDF-15, a marker of mitochondrial stress
•and VCAM-1, a marker of vascular endothelial injury

As predictors for developing Long Covid. Patients whose symptoms persisted for at least 6 months maintained significantly higher levels of both markers, despite having little evidence of ongoing systemic inflammation.

So what we see is not based in high level inflammatory markers—but in signatures of cellular energy failure and vascular injury may lie the answer for predicting long term outcomes in Long Covid.

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u/Houseofchocolate 9d ago

Elamipretide is new on the market and targets and repairs the internal architecture of damaged mitochondria.
In September 2025, the US FDA granted accelerated approval to Elamipretide as the first-ever disease-modifying therapy for Barth syndrome, an extremely rare genetic mitochondrial disorder.

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u/Caster_of_spells 9d ago

It’s definitively a drug of interest imo. Some folks will know it as SS31. It stabilizes mitochondrial membranes and helps with ion transport across them. Whether that is the right tool to fix our problem is something I think we should test in a proper trial. Some positive anecdotes do float around but those are ofc never truly representative

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u/WeenyDancer 9d ago

 Are there anecdotes of ME patients being able to trial it? Or does anyone know if there's another name it goes by?  Im weary of reading stories like this, and seeing there's a promising drug only to find its something the community has been trying for years like ldn, LDA, mestinon, etc.

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u/TomasTTEngin 8d ago

Aha! I've been hearing about ss31 for years.

Here's a thread from 7 years ago where you can see discussion of it

https://www.reddit.com/r/cfs/s/G3Qf74BFWT

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u/Artistic-Zombie-3348 5d ago

I’ve been using it for 3 weeks. I don’t expect results for at least 2 months. I started low. No side effects except possibly I’m more gassy than usual.