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Marc Veldhoen

@marcveld.bsky.social

11K followers 1.3K following 17K posts

Professor of Immunology 🇳🇱 🇬🇧 Lisbon, 🇵🇹 #Immunology Time for Science, not silence https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=7vG1jLIAAAAJ&hl=en https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1478-9562 threads.net/@marc_veld mastodon.online/@marc_veld

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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · Dec 23

Service post:
This account is on anti-science, COVID-19 denial, Long COVID denial, etc., blocklists. All fine, but I'm also running an automated block program. Some unblock me only to find they’re already blocked.

A reminder: be cautious with blocklists.

Unlike X, once blocked = blocked.

Postbox filled with mail, and the forbidden sign behind it.

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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 1h

Dysfunction? Meaningful? Insightful? Reason to worry, even to panic? No, none of that.
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 1h

Sure, since these people were infected, severely ill, in hospital, and will take time to recover. Differences in some genes and proteins are of course expected. The recovery process takes time, longer in severe cases such as these.

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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 1h

Some of the 6 used has pulmonary embolism.... more variable in the set of only 6.
Cells were isolated from blood, then cultured. No cell analyisis was performed and the purity is unknown. Bulk RNA-seq was performed.

Some differences in gene expression were found. Sure....
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 1h

This gives more variability in the data set and becomes very difficult to conclude from. All of the subjects were hospitalised: this does not count for the avarage person. And, all were infected in March-April 2020: there was no immune memory.

Does Harry´s panic still hold?
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 1h

Large differences can be found on mRNA level, which can have limited meaning at protein level. Pre-infection data was unavailable. No infection controls available (no conclusions about SC2 specific effects possible). Then 3 and 2 patients were also classified as LongCovid.
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 1h

It is a small cohort with only 6 subjects, which means chance has a bigger impact. Only 3 individuals were assessed at both 3 and 6 months post-infection. There were 5 controls.

Humans are different from eachother concerning genetic make up.
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 1h

This is the paper, in iScience (Cell press OA).

Transcriptomic Profiling of Endothelial Progenitor Cells in Post-COVID-19 Patients: Insights at 3 and 6-Months Post-Infection

Note: not all details, such as the patient cohort, are online yet.

www.sciencedirect.co...
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Transcriptomic Profiling of Endothelial Progenitor Cells in Post-COVID-19 Patients: Insights at 3 and 6-Months Post-Infection

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused significant global morbidity since 2019. Long-COVID, characterized by persiste…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 1h

Harry Spoelstra keeps posting his interpretaions, but he does not understand scientific papers and their context or methods. He shows that again and again. The huge problem is that he scares people and give very incorrect interpretation into the public domain.

Why incorrect?
1/8

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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 2h

Careful now .... 😂

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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 2h

😇

Live from Berlin @mauritskuypers.bsky.social · 1d

De inmiddels zeldzame patrijs of veldhoen is vogel van het jaar in Duitsland

DER SPIEGEL @spiegel.de · 1d

Berlin: Rebhuhn zum Vogel des Jahres 2026 gewählt: Sie verstecken sich gern in Hecken und picken dort nach Insekten, doch Rebhühner sind selten geworden. Auch deshalb werden sie nun mit einem Preis bedacht. Was die Tiere so besonders macht.

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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 3h

An overstated conclusion.

Reposted by Marc Veldhoen

Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 3d

A case of metastatic breast carcinoma to the skin expressing SARS-CoV-2 spike protein possibly derived from mRNA vaccine

Anti-vaxxers will go mental about this. Mental it is, it is a case study, one patient, no causality, and a vague result. That will not stop them though.
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 4h

So predictable. No, absolutely no, this case study doesn't show anything of that, most certainly no causal link! Sad pretend-"scientist".

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Reposted by Marc Veldhoen

Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 3d

The last update of the preliminary in-season disease burden estimates for the 2024-2025 season for Influenza (Flu) and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).

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Reposted by Marc Veldhoen

Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 18h

Neutralizing antibody durability and SARS-CoV-2 infection in older adults six months after XBB-containing vaccine booster

Again, same rules apply: antibodies wane. Antibodies are not all of immunity, new strains are selected to bind less of them.

www.nature.com/artic...
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Neutralizing antibody durability and SARS-CoV-2 infection in older adults six months after XBB-containing vaccine booster

Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy - Neutralizing antibody durability and SARS-CoV-2 infection in older adults six months after XBB-containing vaccine booster

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Marc Veldhoen

Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 17h

Still people making this complete and utter nonsense claim. This is ridiculously bad. It has no basis in reality, there is no data for this. All data shows SARS-COV-2 is another coronavirus, without any special abilities.

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Reposted by Marc Veldhoen

Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 21h

No, Harry, you fail again to read and understand. In a subgroup of moderate-severe COVID-19 patients, without any prior immunity (1st wave!), some may take a little longer to fully recover lymphocyte numbers (particularly B cells) in the blood. No prior numbers known, age is different, etc.

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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 4h

Oh ja, natuurlijk. Eén vrouw overtuigde je meer dan miljoenen wetenschappers, klinische studies en real-world data. Want niks zegt ‘kritisch denken’ als een anekdote boven bewijs stellen. Inderdaad: wat waar is, kun je onderbouwen.

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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 5h

Commission to probe reports that Orbán’s spies targeted EU officials in Brussels

Hungary’s current European Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi was in charge of the country’s embassy at the time of the allegations.

Commission to probe reports that Orbán’s spies targeted EU officials in Brussels

Hungary’s current European Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi was in charge of the country’s embassy at the time of the allegations.

www.politico.eu

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Reposted by Marc Veldhoen

Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 13h

A cGAS-mediated mechanism in naked mole-rats potentiates DNA repair and delays aging

Naked mole rats get much older than closely related mamals of a similar size. cGAS mutations may have an important role in this.

www.science.org/doi/...
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A cGAS-mediated mechanism in naked mole-rats potentiates DNA repair and delays aging

Efficient DNA repair might make possible the longevity of naked mole-rats. However, whether they have distinctive mechanisms to optimize functions of DNA repair suppressors is unclear. We find that naked mole-rat cyclic guanosine monophosphate–adenosine ...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Marc Veldhoen

Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 1d

It’s the Internet, Stupid

What caused the global populist wave? Blame the screens.

"all the filters that previously existed to control the quality of information disappeared."

A must read by @frankfukuyama.bsky.social

www.persuasion.commu...

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It’s the Internet, Stupid

What caused the global populist wave? Blame the screens.

www.persuasion.community

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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 13h

Although this may open suggestions to ageing too, that is a much more complex issue. Many genes and gene-products need to work in harmony to create a healthy organism. Changing one gene may come at (unexpetcted) costs and requires a lot more reasearch.
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 13h

Evolution rewired a classic immune sensor into a genome stabilizer instead of a brake and sensor of cytosolic dsDNA. The four amino acid tweak in cGAS may underlie the naked mole-rat’s extreme longevity and suggest new ways to stabalise/repoair our DNA.
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 13h

Importantly: delivering naked mole-rat cGAS into aged mice reduced frailty, slowed hair greying, lowered IL-6 and IgG levels, and rejuvenated tissues.
All of this depended on those same 4 amino acids.
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 13h

The result is intreguing: naked mole-rat cGAS helps cells to repair their DNA better, and avoid senescence, thereby maintaining tissue function.
When the 4 amino acids were changed back to how they are in humans/mice, the benefits disappeared.
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