iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

I remember hearing the claim that “your cat could be making you crazy” many years ago. It was wild enough to remember, but I never actually dug into the evidence until now.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

I wrote this story about how "We Once Eliminated a Common Dementia" over two months ago, but I still think about Antoine-Laurent Jessé Bayle. Perhaps he was brave in a way that young scientists can be before they learn how much there is to lose.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

The First Human Cancer Virus: shorturl.at/1OZIq Long before HPV became tied to cervical cancer, hepatitis B/C viruses for liver cancer, and H. pylori for stomach cancer, EBV had already forced scientists to confront the disturbing possibility of a cancer-causing infection.

shorturl.at

The First Human Cancer Virus

Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) forced scientists to confront the disturbing possibility that a silent, lifelong infection could cause cancer under the right conditions.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

This is a promising proof-of-concept paper on personalizing Long COVID treatment. Wick et al. from Austria identified microaggregates and signs of Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) immune reactivation in a subset of Long COVID patients.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

The latest Delphi consensus on Alzheimer’s drug repurposing reviewed 80 candidates and shortlisted just 3 priority ones: - Shingles vaccine - Sildenafil (Viagra) - Riluzole Notably, none are classic anti-amyloid drugs.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

This figure captures something unexpected: tau behaving like an antimicrobial protein.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

New paper on the “pathogen penalty:” People carrying multiple persistent infections (e.g., HSV-1, CMV, EBV, and H. pylori) show accelerated biological aging, even after accounting for some health and socioeconomic factors. Study link: academic.oup.com/jid/advance-...

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Apparently, a common childhood infection can seed the mutational signature for bladder cancer in the future.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

A new neuroimaging study just mapped white-matter damage in ME/CFS using machine learning and causal inference techniques, going beyond typical imaging statistics. Here are three key points I noted:

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

A recent review by Proal & VanElzakker (2025) outlines how chronic infections—whether viral, bacterial, fungal, or parasitic—can accelerate nearly every aspect of aging:

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Two main breakthrough findings from this new Cell paper: 1. In cognitively healthy adults: shingles vaccination reduced incident MCI. 2. In people already diagnosed with dementia: shingles vaccination reduced deaths due to dementia and all-cause mortality.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

New preprint from Belgium: IgG antibodies from neuro-long COVID patients can directly induce pain behaviors when transferred into mice.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

A recent Cell Reports report found that phosphorylated tau — usually cast as the villain — actually protects neurons by suppressing HSV-1 proteins via the cGAS-STING-TBK1 innate immune pathway. In infected neurons, p-tau cut viral protein expression and cell death from 64% to 7%.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) infection is linked to several chronic diseases in a causal manner, e.g., - Multiple sclerosis - Lupus - Nasopharyngeal cancer - Stomach cancer - Lymphoma This begs the question: Where’s our EBV vaccine? Figure source: Rzymski and Szuster-Ciesielska (2023), Reumatologia.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Imagine telling future neurologists that multiple sclerosis once affected millions, before we vaccinated against the virus that caused it. theinfectedneuron.substack.com/p/eradicate-...

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Google Scholar notified me that a new review, “Sequelae of viral CNS infections including outcomes, mechanisms, and knowledge gaps,” cited one of my papers. After going through it, here are the key points:

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Certain oral microbes raise pancreatic cancer risk by up to 50%, while others lower it. And the pattern is reproducible across cohorts. Source: Meng et al. (2025), JAMA Oncology.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

New study from South Korea: The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 entered the hippocampus, disrupted synaptic genes, and triggered tau and α-synuclein aggregation, resulting in cognitive impairment in rats.

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Shin @shinjieyong.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

A new Medical Hypotheses paper proposes a causal chain linking ME/CFS and long COVID to mechanical stress on the brainstem: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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