Nyree Penn describes restorative failure, a sleep condition where people fall asleep and show brain activity but can't reach deep or REM sleep. The SARS-CoV-2 virus may damage GABA-B receptors, preventing actual rest. Some post-COVID patients experience this.
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This is probably one of the most misunderstood phenotypes. So the restorative failure, and I don't wanna make it sound so dismal, however, the restorative failure endotypes that we've identified is that what happens is these people actually have lost the physiological ability to get into restorative sleep. Remember, something we also focus on is, are you restoring? It's fine you go to sleep, it's fine you get your brain rest, but are you restoring? Are you getting the restorative benefits of neurological deep restorative REM sleep. These people cannot. These people actually fall into the category of our COVID patients that we've seen recently, to where there seems to be something that the COVID virus has either affected their GABA-B-specific receptors.