'Vascular Aging May Explain Long COVID's Predominance in Women'

 

• Accelerated vascular aging after COVID-19 infection was found to be limited to women in a prospective cohort study.
• Researchers relied on measurements of carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity, a marker of large artery stiffness.
• The temporary increase in pulse wave velocity was linked to long COVID symptoms in women.

COVID-19 infection was associated with accelerated aging of blood vessels, especially in women, the CARTESIAN study showed.

In an international cohort of patients recruited from 2020 to 2022, COVID-negative controls showed an adjusted mean carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) of 7.53 m/s, while COVID-positive patients had significantly higher PWV, whether they were hospitalized (+0.37 m/s, P=0.001), admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU; +0.40 m/s, P=0.003), or avoided hospitalization (+0.41 m/s, P<0.001) -- higher measurements of PWV translate to stiffer blood vessels and greater vascular age.

This was specifically the case for women, with PWV increases ranging from +0.55 to +1.09 m/s across the COVID-positive groups, reported Rosa Maria Bruno, MD, PhD, of Université Paris Cité, and colleagues in the European Heart Journalopens in a new tab or window.

"The CARTESIAN study is the first study adequately powered to demonstrate the extent of COVID-19-induced vascular aging and the relationship with disease severity, independent of [cardiovascular] risk factor burden," the authors wrote. "To our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating that the association between COVID-19 and vascular aging is modified by sex."

Older literature had generally shown that men were more susceptible to severe acute COVID, while women were more at risk of long COVID.

Bruno cited several possible explanations for the vascular effects of COVID and the observed sex differences.

"The COVID-19 virus acts on specific receptors in the body, called the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptors, that are present on the lining of the blood vessels," Bruno said in a press release. "The virus uses these receptors to enter and infect cells. This may result in vascular dysfunction and accelerated vascular aging. Our body's inflammation and immune responses, which defend against infections, may be also involved."

"One of the reasons for the difference between women and men could be differences in the function of the immune system," she noted. "Women mount a more rapid and robust immune response, which can protect them from infection. However, this same response can also increase damage to blood vessels after the initial infection."

This may be relevant to the persistence of brain fog and other long COVID symptomsopens in a new tab or window commonly reported months or even years after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Indeed, the CARTESIAN researchers reported that among women, those with persistent COVID symptoms at their 6-month follow-up tended to have higher PWV compared with peers who fully recovered from infection (7.52 vs 7.13 m/s, P<0.001). Meanwhile, men had unchanged PWV whether they had persistent symptoms or not (8.50 vs 8.43 m/s, P=0.563).

"Although the study did not explicitly define post-acute COVID-19 syndrome using the WHO criteria, these results suggest that PWV may serve as a physiological marker of symptom persistence in females, and possibly a prognostic indicator of vascular injury," wrote Behnood Bikdeli, MD, MS, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues in an accompanying editorialopens in a new tab or window.

Followed over a longer term, the COVID-recovered participants in CARTESIAN typically had stable or improved PWV after 12 months, while controls had increases in PWV during that time.

"The slight increase in PWV seen in the COVID-19 group could be attributed partly to normal aging, but also to a possible asymptomatic or undiagnosed subsequent COVID-19 infection in these patients," Bruno and team noted.

Bikdeli's group pointed out that "although irreparable vascular damage is likely, this may be only partial, with other components related to autonomic dysfunction of vascular tone or residual inflammation improving over time, as seen with reduced PWV."

CARTESIAN was a prospective cohort study of 2,390 people in 16 countries recruited from 2020 to 2022. The researchers included COVID-negative controls and people with recent COVID infection who were divided into those who were not hospitalized, were hospitalized, and admitted to the ICU.

Across the four groups, mean age was 50, and 49.2% were women. As expected, the hospitalized COVID patients were older, more frequently men, and had a higher burden of cardiovascular risk factors and disease compared with non-hospitalized patients and uninfected controls. Non-hospitalized COVID patients and controls shared a similar baseline cardiovascular risk profile.

Ultimately, 2,094 patients were included in the main outcome analysis at 6 months, of which 1,024 made it to the longer follow-up visit that took place a median 314 days later.

Across the COVID cohorts, the prevalence of long COVID symptoms fell from 46% at 6 months to 37.6% at the later follow-up point.

Meanwhile, the proportion of vaccinated participants rose from 10.4% to 72.2%.

Although vaccination was associated with lower PWV in CARTESIAN, the study authors pointed to intrinsic differences between the vaccinated and nonvaccinated patients that could not be controlled with their observational study design.

Bruno and colleagues also acknowledged the potential survival bias and lack of accounting for early vascular aging pre-dating COVID-19 infection in their study.

The editorialists added that the study was not powered to test for treatment effects of medications such as statins.

"Vascular aging is easy to measure and can be addressed with widely available treatments, such as lifestyle changes, blood pressure-lowering and cholesterol-lowering drugs," Bruno noted. "For people with accelerated vascular aging, it is important to do whatever possible to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes."

Disclosures

CARTESIAN was supported by research grants from the Artery Society, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Fondation Université de Paris, AXA research fund, Fondation Hopitaux de Paris-Hopitaux de France, Mécénat du GH APHP; CUP, Fondation for the research in Physiology and DMU BioPhyGen, and funding for the COVID-HOP study; with devices provided by IEM Gmbh, Quipu srl, Atcor Medical, and Visualsonics Fujifilm.

Bruno and colleagues had no relevant disclosures.

Bikdeli reported support from awards from the American Heart Association and VIVA Physicians, the Scott Schoen and Nancy Adams IGNITE Award, the Mary Ann Tynan Research Scientist award from his institution, and an NIH grant. He previously served as a consulting expert on IVC filter litigation. He is a member of the Medical Advisory Board for the North American Thrombosis Forum (VasuLearn Network); serves on the Data Safety and Monitory Board of the NAIL-IT trial funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and Translational Sciences; consults with the International Consulting Associates and the FDA; and is an editor for various medical journals.

Primary Source

European Heart Journal

Source Reference: Bruno RM, et al "Accelerated vascular ageing after COVID-19 infection: the CARTESIAN study" Eur Heart J 2025; DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf430.

Secondary Source

European Heart Journal

Source Reference: Bukhari S, et al "COVID-19 and vascular ageing: an accelerated yet partially reversible clock?" Eur Heart J 2025; DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf590.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/cardiology/generalcardiology/117033

China’s Cement Slump Signals End of 21st-Century Building Boom

 

Few commodities tell the story of China’s 21st-century economy better than humble cement, and its current output slump illustrates the depth of the nation’s building slowdown after the frenzy of the previous decade.

Cement production posted its weakest July for any year since 2009, as an unresolved real estate crisis and tepid infrastructure activity weigh on construction. The cement figure was just one among a bundle of data points released on Friday showing a sharp deceleration in the world’s No. 2 economy.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-18/china-s-cement-slump-signals-end-of-21st-century-building-boom

New GPS Data Reveals Exactly Who Showed Up At White House Protests

 Dark-money-funded leftist NGOs were at it again this weekend, attempting to stage a color-revolution-style regime change in Washington, D.C., right outside the White House. But as with every operation this year, dating back to "Tesla Takedown," the only people these far-left groups, funded by rogue billionaires and some with taxpayer funds, managed to summon were the usual unhinged white baby-boomer liberal, serial protesters at best, with nothing else better to do. 

Self-proclaimed investor and "CIA/NSA contractor/whistleblower" Tony Seruga wrote on X about who potentially attended the D.C. protest march on Saturday. Using device data collected from the area, Seruga found it was largely the same crowd, leftist NGO foot soldiers - or repeat protesters from previous marches... 

Here's a breakdown of Seruga's data: 

Device Analysis

• 318 mobile devices present (law enforcement, media, and demonstrators).

• 92% of devices had been at 5+ past D.C. protests.

• 67 devices tied to federal government employees, with access to secured federal buildings (DoD, VA, DHS, DOJ, FBI, Treasury).

• 9 devices accessed the White House Northwest Gate multiple times in the prior 30 days.

Demographics: Mostly local DMV residents; 86.7% from homes valued >$850,000, 34% from homes valued >$2.5 million.

Protest Details

• Branded as "Free DC" and "Fight the Trump Takeover".

• Targeted Trump's federalization of D.C. policing and National Guard deployments from GOP states.

• Route: Dupont Circle → White House (~1.5 miles). Chants/signs: "Trump Must Go", "Hands Off DC".

• Part of broader anti-Trump demonstrations nationwide.

Organizers & Funding

• Led by Community Change and Community Change Action under the "Free DC" initiative.

• Backed by $20M+ from progressive dark-money networks: Soros' Open Society Foundations Arabella Advisors network Tides Foundation

Paid Participation

• Reports of 400% surge in demand for paid protesters in D.C. after Trump's announcements.

• Crowds on Demand confirmed anti-Trump events drove most inquiries.

• Soros allegedly spent $20M on crowd-rental services for demonstrations.

Free speech in the U.S. was never intended to serve as a perpetual vehicle for a permanent protest industrial complex funded by leftist billionaires and new indications that foreign adversaries could be sowing chaos in the U.S., exploiting the NGO sphere: Think Communist billionaire Neville Roy Singham...

What certainly caught everyone's attention was a recent interview between NewsNation's Brian Entin and Adam Swart, CEO of an activist group called 'Crowds on Demand'.

Swart told Entin that an unnamed organization offered his company $20 million to recruit demonstrators for the anti-Trump protests in July. 

He told the journalist, "We had to reject an offer worth around $20 million for nationwide, large-scale demonstrations across the country. Personally, I don't think it's effective. I'm rejecting the contract not because I don't want the business, but because, frankly, this is going to be ineffective and make us all look bad."

From Seruga's GPS data to the interview with the Crowds on Demand CEO, the picture that readers have known all along is clear: the permanent protester industrial complex is bankrolled by leftist billionaires (and possibly group ex-US). Some of these groups were highly successful during the Marxist revolt of 2020 via BLM and other rogue non-profits, but their latest color-revolution-style operation has run into brick walls, especially after the Trump administration deployed federal soldiers into Los Angeles earlier this summer to crush the Marxist anti-ICE chaos.

The permanent protester industrial complex will march on - and its followers include unhinged white baby boomers, some of whom look like they were bused in from retirement homes.

Old White liberals carry signs during a protest against President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of policing of the District of Columbia, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The Trump administration is waking up to how foreign adversaries are using rogue leftist NGO networks for irregular warfare.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-device-data-reveals-exactly-who-showed-white-house-protests

FDA Approves Therapy For Rare Disease Without Randomized Trial Data

 by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Food and Drug Administration on Aug. 14 approved a therapy for a rare disease called recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP).

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in White Oak, Md., on June 5, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Regulators cleared Papzimeos, an immunotherapy made by Precigen, citing data from a single-arm, open-label trial that looked at how it performed in adults with RRP and who needed at least three surgeries a year.

Patients received four injections of the therapy over 12 weeks following surgical procedures.

About half of the participants needed no surgery in the year following treatment. The safety profile was also deemed favorable.

“Randomized trials are not always needed to approve medical products and this approval is proof of that philosophy,” Dr. Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.

“The FDA will always demand the correct clinical study for the specific medical product and disease. Our requirements for products given to tens of millions of healthy people will be different than products given to at most hundreds or thousands of patients with unique diseases.”

The approval is the first announcement from Prasad after he rejoined the FDA following his July resignation.

Prasad had received criticism for not approving enough new drugs and therapies, including from the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which said that Prasad “has long criticized such single-arm studies that have no placebo groups.”

Replimune’s treatment for advanced melanoma is among the drugs the FDA has rejected since Prasad became its top vaccine and biologics official.

Prasad said in May that he favors randomized clinical trials but that for some rare diseases, it would be difficult or even impossible to complete such trials. He said that the FDA would have a “flexible regulatory standard” that takes into account “the context of a disease.”

In June, in an article co-authored by FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, he said that for some products targeting rare diseases, “premarket randomized trials may not be feasible.”

RRP, which is caused by human papillomavirus, features the development of noncancerous tumors in the air passages inside the body. Without removal, the tumors lead to problems such as difficulty breathing.

People with the disease typically undergo multiple surgeries per year because the tumors often regrow after removal.

About 1,000 new cases of RRP are diagnosed in the United States on an annual basis, according to the FDA.

Before the approval of Papzimeos, there were no approved therapies for RRP.

“For more than a century, since RRP was first recognized as a distinct disease, patients have had to rely on repeated surgeries to manage this relentless condition,” Precigen CEO Helen Sabzevari said in a statement. “Today marks a historic turning point.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/fda-approves-therapy-rare-disease-without-randomized-trial-data

Is change coming to China?

 

By Andrea Widburg

Xi Jinping became the top dog in China in 2012, serving as both general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission, and, by 2013, as China’s president. Under his aegis, China has expanded its reach enormously.

The Belt and Road project, which has seen China take over seaports, airports, and other infrastructure across the world, started under his aegis. Xi was also responsible for hugely expanding the development of artificial islands in the South China Sea, which China used to claim more of that waterway for its own and to serve as military bases. Military spending has also escalated in a straight upward line under Xi’s premiership, according to information gleaned from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US DOD, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Image created using Grok.

Xi has made China, the single largest country in the world by population, a much more threatening institution.

However, there’s always been more than a whiff of Potemkin Village about China. It’s long-standing, although now-discarded, one-child policy has left it with a serious sex imbalance. While the natural sex ratio at birth is 105 boys for every 100 girls, in China, at the peak of the policy, some provinces were reporting 125 boys to 100 girls. The numbers have leveled out a bit, but they’re still distorted, at about 111 boys to 100 girls. A society with a huge number of surplus men is dangerous because men, untempered by morality and justice, are dangerous.

China’s managed economy has also had problems. Last October, I wrote,

The biggest hint that the Chinese economy was in trouble was the demise of Evergrande, a massive property developer in China. The bankruptcy was huge, with the company’s assets valued at a probably inflated $245 billion and debts of $300 billion. However, Evergrande was just the biggest pop in the Chinese real estate bubble, not the only one.

Across the board, Chinese ventures have been having problems, whether with overvalued assets, the Belt and Road initiative (which was fading even before Israel blew up the Belt and Road port in Yemen), or its demographic implosion, which will leave it as a nation of old men.

 

The military is also somewhat illusory. In May or June, a nuclear submarine sank in a Chinese shipyard—although, to be fair, we had a disastrous Navy ship fire a few years back, and a New Zealand ship just ran aground and caught fire. These things do happen.

Generally, though, the Chinese military has a competency problem with both men and equipment.

Although China kept producing goods in the first half of 2025, the number of people buying those goods decreased. In addition, companies are laying off employees. In 2024, the biggest solar companies in China laid off almost one-third of their workers. Generally, China is grappling with unemployment and under-employment, which are exceptionally sensitive issues for a country in which the government manages the economy.

While China is still a force to be reckoned with and should never be discounted, all is not well in the world’s largest communist nation. Rod D. Martin, an entrepreneur and anti-communist who is aligned with the Peter Thiel branch of the tech world, thinks that Xi Jinping is facing the end of the line—and that the incoming powers may be less interested in world conquest and more interested in shoring up China’s domestic situation:

I don’t know if Martin is right, but I’d like to think he is. That’s partly because his analysis tracks my own take on the situation and partly because it would be a good thing if Chinese, with its more than a billion people and its massive nuclear and biochemical stockpile (you’re lying to yourself if you think it doesn’t have biochemical weapons), were less focused on ruling the world and more focused on making life better for its citizens.

Oh, and if anyone can be the straw that breaks Xi’s back and causes China to retreat and retrench, that person is Donald Trump. We dodged a huge Chinese bullet when Kamala lost.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/08/is_change_coming_to_china.html

Billionaires For Socialism: The $2 Billion "Grassroots" Operation Behind Zohran Mamdani

 by Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising, 

How the Working Families Party sells itself as "grassroots" — with IRS-documented, publicly admitted "common control" revealing it's really a Soros-financed political money washer.

In New York politics, there's one machine that towers above the rest. No, not the Democratic Party—it's the Working Families Party, the most powerful minor party in America. Its name sounds wholesome enough—who doesn't support "working families"? But behind that branding lies a $2 billion tax-exempt laundromat that's anything but local, grassroots, or honest.

Take Zohran Mamdani, their current belle of the ball. 

Easy answer: Zohran Mandani is the product of a grassroots washing syndicate of 501c3 and 501c4 entities funded by George Soros and Silicon Valley billionaires. He is their manufactured product.

Receipts
➡️ https://t.co/GrF1LkVo3H https://t.co/4MXlJyiOAq

— Sam E. Antar (@SamAntar) August 17, 2025

After winning his race, he announced on NBC: "I don't think we should have billionaires." Hilarious considering Mamdani's "grassroots" revolution was fueled by over $2 million in PAC and organizational spending, much of it courtesy of the very billionaire class he allegedly opposes.

Zohran Mamdani: "I don't think we should have billionaires because it is so much money in a moment of such inequality."pic.twitter.com/LOoNw4w6dF

— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) July 1, 2025

This is the theater of modern politics: denounce wealth while being powered by it. And the actors know their audience. They've learned that if you slap "grassroots" on the packaging, voters won't check the label.

But let's check it anyway.

The money trail revealed in Sam Antar's breaking report is straightforward enough. Soros donates to the Open Society Institute, a $4.5 billion "charity" that enjoys generous tax deductions. OSI then transfers millions to other "charities" like Tides Foundation, which mysteriously claims to run a $350 million operation with zero employees. From there, the money "converts" into political cash: Tides passes funds to the Working Families Organization, a 501(c)(4), which then wires millions to PACs that bankroll candidates like Mamdani.

What you have is billionaire money dressed up in "working families" clothing, masquerading as the will of the people while being anything but. 

And don't take my word for it. These groups openly admit to "common control" and "shared staff" across their charities and political arms. In plain English: the same people make decisions for both sides of the ledger. One day they're signing checks for the "charity," the next for the political arm. The IRS explicitly forbids this. Charities must operate "exclusively" for charitable purposes. The moment they cross into political campaigning, their exemptions should be revoked.

Auditors have already blown the whistle. Deloitte and Withum both flagged "significant deficiencies" and "common officers" across these supposedly separate entities. The IRS has a simple doctrine for this: substance over form. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and flaps like a duck, it doesn't matter if the paperwork calls it a horse.

The numbers are staggering. Soros's network alone controls $5.57 billion in assets, generating untaxed returns. If properly taxed, that would mean roughly $450 million a year back to American taxpayers. Instead, the money is siphoned into a political machine that signals to the public that it represents them while pushing the Open Societies agenda. 

Meanwhile, the watchdogs were compromised. Larry Moskowitz, a 15-year WFP veteran, sat on the New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB) while these schemes played out. A senior staffer at the same agency, David Duhalde, the former deputy director of the DSA, also worked at the CFB while his organization ran someone for mayor. 

In other words, the referees were not only wearing the team jersey—they were helping write the playbook.

And so you see things that are mathematically impossible: same-day circular transactions, PACs that pay for services with money they never had, taxpayer matching funds generated by coordinated activities that should have been disqualified. In any other setting, this would be called fraud. In politics, but when progressives control the government agencies, it's called "movement-building."

It's all part of a larger hypocrisy. The WFP rails against billionaires while being funded by them. It preaches "democracy" while short-circuiting the rules designed to protect it. And it claims to stand for working families while serving as the cash pipeline for radicals whose agenda—abolishing capitalism, police, borders, and private property—would make working families' lives unrecognizable.

This is the great genius of the modern left: to run what is essentially a billionaire-backed, tax-exempt machine while insisting it's "grassroots." It's not just dishonest—it's corrosive. Because when billionaires can buy socialism tax-free, when oversight boards are stacked with partisans, and when voters are told they're seeing a bottom-up revolution while it's actually a top-down operation, democracy becomes little more than political theater.

The IRS has more than enough evidence. Over a thousand pages of filings, audits, and disclosures show the same thing: systematic tax fraud, documented in their own paperwork. The question is whether anyone in Washington has the courage to act.

If this were a conservative network, there would be hearings, front-page outrage, and high-profile perp walks. Instead, because the machine flies a progressive banner, it gets a pass. Billionaires for socialism—what a joke. But the laugh's on us, and the bill is north of $450 million a year.

Working Families? Please. This is a billionaire racket. And unless the IRS acts, it will keep laundering tax-exempt dollars into political power, one "grassroots" revolution at a time.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/billionaires-socialism-2-billion-grassroots-operation-behind-zohran-mamdani