This Twitter thread talked about how there are a huge number of diseases which are actually results of long-term infection. What we commonly think of as “polio” — the paralysis — actually is “long polio” — only 0.5% of polio cases end up with paralysis. This blog post talks about how many diseases (especially autoimmune diseases) are triggered by other illnesses.
Viruses and parasites which lead to illnesses (many of which were mentioned in the thread above, but which I have added to):
- long polio is paralysis
- long strep throat (which sometimes becomes scarlet fever) is Rheumatic heart disease and PANS/PANDAs
- long chicken pox is shingles and Ramsay Hunt Syndrome; shingles also increases your risk of stroke by 80% in the year afterwards, increases your risk of vascular dementia, and perhaps increases your biological age.
- long HIV is AIDS
- long HPV is cervical cancer, anal cancer, oropharyngeal cancer, penile cancer, vaginal cancer, and/or vulvar cancer
- long H. pylori is stomach cancer
- long Herpes Simplex Virus 1 (HSV1) is dementia / Alzheimer’s Disease(possibly reactivated by a virus or other stressor, e.g. shingles)
- long herpes simplex 1 (“cold sores”), herpes simplex 2 (“herpes”), and/or chicken pox (which is also a herpes virus) is Mollaret’s meningitis
- long Epstein-Barr virus is mono, multiple sclerosis, (probably) lupus, and certain types of lymphoma
- this paper (2025-10-14) gives a very strong hint that multiple sclerosis and ALS are linked, although this paper (2026-01-20) suggests that air pollution is also involved
- long bacterial plaque is gingivitis
- long Epstein Barr Virus or long coxsackie or long influenza or long dengue they think might be Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
- long influenza can be many things, especially heart attacks and pulmonary issues
- long enteroviruses are maybe Type 1 diabetes
- long hepatitis B or C is liver cancer
- long hepatitis C might be schizophrenia
- long herpes virus 8 is Kaposi sarcoma
- long rubella is blindness, deafness, heart problems, intellectual disability, liver damage, spleen damage
- long measles is Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis
- long Lyme is many things, including possibly lupus
- long syphilis is dementia and infertility
- long TB is brain and/or lung damage
- long sepsis is post-sepsis syndrome
- long prion disease is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
- long mumps is male infertility
- long E. coli and/or long noroviris is irritable bowel syndrome
- long viral pneumonia is asthma
- long histoplasmosis is… many things (I believe my mother’s deafness was long histoplasmosis)
- long SARS doesn’t have a name (but is extremely common among people who got SARS)
- long Strep mutans and Lactobacilli is dental cavities
- long red complex bacteria is periodontis
- long nipah virus is encephalitis
- long viral hemorrhagic fevers and cytomegalovirus is deafness
- long rheumatic fever is heart murmurs
- long human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 is leukaemia and/or HAM/TSP
- long parvovirus P19 is arthritis and hydrops fetalis
- long Hendra disease is long Hendra disease (aka leprosy)
- long Mycobacterium leprae is Hansen’s disease
- (in cats) long Feline Coronavirus is Feline Infectious Peritonitis
- long chikungunya is long chikungunya
- long Ross River virus is Ross River Fever
- long cytomegalovirus is implicated in aging more poorly
- long flaviviruses (e.g. West Nile, Zika) is constipation
- long human pegivirus (AKA HPgV) appears linked to Parkinson’s
- long Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) can cause leukemia.
- long West Nile is um they don’t have a name for it, so um long West Nile
- long mpox is doesn’t have a name
- long RSV doesn’t have a name
- long group A streptococcus (GAS) is septic arthritis, rheumatic fever, and rheumatic heart disease (vaccines in pre-clinical trials)
- one of enterovirus D68 and/or enterovirus A71 probably is behind paralysis from acute flaccid myelitis (Enterovirus A71 vaccine with 83% effectiveness (2024-09-26) approved in China in 2015; Taiwanese enterovirus A71 vaccine reported 99% effectiveness in Phase 3 trial (2026-02-26)
- long Ebola doesn’t have a name
- long schistosomiasis is bladder cancer
- long onchoceriasis (“river blindness”) is bile duct cancer, blindness
- long Chagas disease is chagas cardiomyopathy
- long trachoma is blindness
This is an interesting article talking about infectious diseases causing what we think of as non-infectious conditions. This blog post talks about the damage viruses do, and points to this study which found a bunch of connections to associations between viruses and long-term effects.
I wonder if what we think of as “aging” is mostly the accumulation of damage that viruses do. This paper (2025-01-16) says that this paper (1966-07-01), which is mostly offline, says that germ-free rodents live longer than normal lab rats. (Note: some bacteria are useful to have in the gut, so a completely pathogen-free rodent presumably get less benefit than a virus-free rodent.)