Australia: 3rd ME/CFS & Long COVID International Conference 2023: RID- Research, Innovation & Discovery, November 2023

Australia

3rd ME/CFS & Long COVID International Conference 2023: RID- Research, Innovation & Discovery in November

Some speakers: Dr Elizabeth Unger/Dr Brian Walitt/Prof Katsuhiko Muraki (from https://www.facebook.com/NCNED)

https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/...23-rid-research-innovation-and-discovery.html

 

Program is up:

 

Along with anything immune/metabolic, for me the MRI session is particularly interesting, but more generally "TBA" from Brian Walitt might be attracting most of our attention...

I couldn't see an option for online attendance. Does anyone know for this year or from previous years?

 

A recording of the 3rd ME/CFS & Long COVID International Conference 2023: RID- Research, Innovation & Discovery, November 2023 is now available here:
https://vimeo.com/showcase/RID-2024

 

I had a look at Walitt’s talk. It’s talk number 3 titled “Exploring the Post-Acute Sequelae of Covid-19 at the National Institutes of Health”.

He begins by talking about the pandemic and his earliest work on Long-Covid titled “A clinical primer for the expected and potential post-COVID-19 syndromes” which placed a large focus on somatic and psychiatric complaints in the absence of a clearly observable cause (discussed here).

He then talks about the physiological outcomes of an acute Covid infection: Inflammation, Thrombosis and lastly Fear, Stress and Change.

From there he briefly talks about PASC subtypes: Cardiac, Pulmonary, Neurologic (which includes ME/CFS), which he follows up on by focusing on Post-viral fatiguing Syndromes from a historical perspective (UK viral meningitis, Behan, Dubbo, SARS, etc).

He then goes on to talk about what he and the NIH did in regards to epidemiological work on LC, with a focus on symptomatology as time progresses. His work is an accordance what many of us would agree with, i.e. the longer you have symptoms after Covid infection the more likely you are for those symptoms to be more similar to those of ME/CFS.

He then shows a case study of such a person that suffers from LC. He notes that even though standard test of this patients were all normal, 6 months out they were able to detect pulmonary emboli via a chest CT with contrast which everyone thought was extremely surprising. They treated this patient with Apixaban and he improved.

The point he makes is that many PASC cases will have an alternative medical explanation rather than just “Long Covid” and highlights that diligence and follow-up over time are crucial.

They present a second case of a person who didn’t recover from acute Covid whose medical exam looked normal but who experienced POT and PEM. They asked themselves what this person should be diagnosed with since she met the criteria for ME/CFS, but also POTS etc. Walitt then spends some time talking about EBV and it’s connection to LC and ME/CFS.

Overall the talk focuses on the heterogeneity of LC and the complications this creates.

He mentions in his response to one question that one of the ME/CFS patients in the intramural study symptoms resolved after a Covid infection.

It’s a very sensible talk, given how many people have failed to accept the heterogeneity of LC and in particular in relation to the rather bland work RECOVER did and whilst he comes across as very charismatic I don't think there’s anything worthy of discussion for anybody somewhat familiar with LC and ME/CFS research.