(Baker Institute, Australia) "Funding to advance understanding of the impacts of long Covid" plus POTS and ME/CFS

Dolphin

Dolphin

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
https://baker.edu.au/news/institute-news/long-covid-funding

Funding to advance understanding of the impacts of long Covid

13 June 2024

Institute news
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Associate Professor Erin Howden is one of 12 researchers nationally to be awarded a Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) grant aimed at improving the lives of people with long Covid. The grants are the first investments from a $50 million commitment from the Federal Government to generate better evidence on the effective management of long COVID in the Australian community.

Fatigue, dizziness, tachycardia and brain fog are among the most commonly described symptoms of long Covid/post-acute sequalae of Covid-19 (PASC). These symptoms are also commonly experienced by individuals affected by postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

There’s been considerable interest about the potential overlap between PASC, POTS and ME/CFS, but there’s been no detailed investigation of the shared pathophysiology of these conditions.

A/Prof Howden’s $800,000 grant will allow her to combine MRI scans with direct recordings of sympathetic nerve activity to understand how the brain is regulating blood pressure during stressors like orthostatic challenge and exercise in patients with long Covid, POTS and ME/CFS.

By understanding the mechanisms contributing to long COVID, she hopes to be able to direct treatment strategies that alleviate or resolve symptoms to restore the quality of life for people with long Covid.

TAGS: news institute-news

https://twitter.com/user/status/1801597162326815090
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From the link above "Associate Professor Erin Howden"
Erin is the head of the Cardiometabolic Health and Exercise Physiology lab, co-lead of the Physical Activity Program and also the co-chair of Research Training and Education Committee at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. She is an honorary senior research fellow in the Department of Cardiometabolic Medicine at the University of Melbourne and School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine at Monash University. After receiving her PhD from the University of Queensland in 2012, Erin completed 4 years of postdoctoral training at the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine a world renowned institute for study of human clinical and integrative physiology. In 2020, Erin was awarded a prestigious Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship and was recognised by the Baker Institute as an Emerging Leader through the award of the Sir Laurence Muir Prize.

Erin’s background is in clinical exercise physiology with further training in cardiovascular imaging and invasive haemodynamics. Her program of research seeks to enhance the prevention and treatment of cardiometabolic disease in at risk groups through developing innovative multidisciplinary approaches, with a particular focus on “exercise as medicine”. The main impact of more effective therapeutic strategies will be lower health care expenditure, improved quality of life and reduced morbidity and lower mortality associated with cardiovascular disease. Her research combines ‘state-of-the-art’ cardiac and vascular imaging approaches, exercise testing and classic hemodynamic techniques and big data/bioinformatics approaches to gain a deeper understanding of human integrative physiology. Erin’s diverse research program aims to improve outcomes for those at risk of heart failure, to do this her team investigates the mechanisms of exercise intolerance in at risk individuals and efficacy of novel treatment strategies.

Erin’s most seminal work to date showed that exercise training is an effective countermeasure to prevent the cardiovascular effects of sedentary aging, which was published in Circulation in 2018. She has also recently led the development of a tool to characterise exercise limitations via a novel approach which phenotypes the oxygen pathway which was also published in Circulation in 2021.
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The study sounds great, very much needed, and it's not surprising someone with a background in exercise physiology is doing it. AP Howden sounds well qualified to do the study. The fact that ME/CFS is mentioned might mean that they will assess whether people have PEM, so that later results can be analysed taking that into account.

Unfortunately, Professor Andrew Lloyd's fingers are, I think, all over the $50 million of funds, and that, and, well, history, means a background as highlighted above creates some concern, especially in relation to
By understanding the mechanisms contributing to long COVID, she hopes to be able to direct treatment strategies that alleviate or resolve symptoms to restore the quality of life for people with long Covid.
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I see that she does some work in Melbourne. It would be great if researchers there could reach out to her, maybe to have a workshop or something.
@MelbME; @DMissa
And perhaps someone on twitter could suggest that she joins some of the recent discussions here about POT, orthostatic intolerance and other things?
 
Hutan said:
From the link above "Associate Professor Erin Howden"


The study sounds great, very much needed, and it's not surprising someone with a background in exercise physiology is doing it. AP Howden sounds well qualified to do the study. The fact that ME/CFS is mentioned might mean that they will assess whether people have PEM, so that later results can be analysed taking that into account.

Unfortunately, Professor Andrew Lloyd's fingers are, I think, all over the $50 million of funds, and that, and, well, history, means a background as highlighted above creates some concern, especially in relation to


I see that she does some work in Melbourne. It would be great if researchers there could reach out to her, maybe to have a workshop or something.
@MelbME; @DMissa
And perhaps someone on twitter could suggest that she joins some of the recent discussions here about POT, orthostatic intolerance and other things?
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We are working with her lab on 2 separate projects on ME/CFS and POTS already. And yes both are looking at PEM so I assume she'd be assessing this.

Kegan Moneghetti is who we mainly collaborate in her group. https://baker.edu.au/research/staff/kegan-moneghetti

Kegan was initiated in to working on ME at Stanford, not with Ron Davis though.
 
The main impact of more effective therapeutic strategies will be lower health care expenditure, improved quality of life and reduced morbidity and lower mortality associated with cardiovascular disease. Her research combines ‘state-of-the-art’ cardiac and vascular imaging approaches, exercise testing and classic hemodynamic techniques and big data/bioinformatics approaches to gain a deeper understanding of human integrative physiology.
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Clearly starts off with too much bias, though, assumes that it's a given. I don't understand the fanatical obsession with making exercise medicine. It won't accomplish any of the things they think it will. The pattern we see in almost all the studies supporting this are all about recreation, about people taking time to do things they enjoy, but always with an absurd mindset that misunderstands human nature as if we could all just find one activity we like and do nothing but that several times per week, kind of like an exercise wheel for hamsters.

I really have no idea what they expect out of this. But all of the above is pure fantasy. It actually me reminds of a common joke in sports fandoms: why don't they just score more goals than their opponents, are they stupid? As if there is this simple answer, which everyone has already thought of, that will just unleash health and creativity if only people... weren't stupid?

Seriously what is it that they think people are missing here? If exercise were that great, that immediately good for health, and it is, why don't most people engage in it? Well, as we see, this is purely recreational activity. Lots of people work hard labor, somehow I have never once seen any study of this in the context of physical activity. Not a single one, in fact people who work physical labor tend to die younger. Even though it should count even more, since we'd be talking about 40h/week or so or physical labor. And yet, no, it's all recreational. All of it. Even down to finger painting and gazing out in a forest path. Which isn't exercise anymore, but it is recreational leisure time. Which most people don't have.

This obsession has existed for well over a century. And it's still pure fantasy. I don't get it. This isn't like pursuing nuclear fusion, it's more like trying to find magical elves who can produce power.
 
I was going to disagree with you a bit Rvallee, and suggest exercise is useful for some things, giving the example of Type 2 diabetes. Can't walking programmes tip some people out of type 2 diabetes? Activity, within reason, surely is good.

rvallee said:
Not a single one, in fact people who work physical labor tend to die younger.
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But then I read that point, and realised that just recently a lovely extended family member died way too young, having worked physically hard for his whole life. He had a heart attack while doing a strenuous work task. Oh, and he had Type 2 diabetes.... Not overweight, not a drinker..... I guess there could be some confounders, on average, for people who have worked at physically hard tasks for years, although certainly not always.

And the possible confounders go both ways. The people who have the time to do gentle yoga on the grass in the sunshine probably have, on average, certain lifestyle advantages.

.......
Anyway, it's terrific that informed researchers already have links with AP Erin Howden and it sounds as though she may also be well-informed. I look forward to hearing more about the research as it progresses.
 
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Hutan said:
I was going to disagree with you a bit Rvallee, and suggest exercise is useful for some things, giving the example of Type 2 diabetes. Can't walking programmes tip some people out of type 2 diabetes? Activity, within reason, surely is good.
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I only meant the overarching goals of basically transforming society, all but eliminating some diseases, saving huge amounts of money on health care and so on. This is basically the aim and promise of the modern biopsychosocial ideology, and it really can be summed as I put it above: people could easily be healthier and wealthier if they wanted to, what are they, stupid? I've seen so many actual MDs say out loud that in their opinion, most diseases are purely caused by lifestyles, which is no different at all from old superstitions about demons and evil spirits.

Exercise is good for health. But it is at best 1-10% as important as it's been made out to be, one of many things that can improve quality of life a bit, none that can guarantee it. It's not transformational, not some panacea or simple and cheap solution that will unleash health and wealth for all. If that were true, I guarantee you that most exercise would be free. Gyms? Free. Organized sports? Free. There would be exercise parks with equipment and coaches and all that everywhere and it would all be 100% free because it would genuinely be cheap in very observable, quantifiable ways.

But it's not because we don't live in a fantasy universe like Care bears or anything like that. The biggest constraints are financial, and even then the idle rich don't necessarily do that much of it, because it's just not that magically beneficial. For sure it's the solution to being in a poor physical condition when there is a stated goal that requires being fit. Other than that, it's probably a top 10 most overhyped thing in history.

And really, the whole difference is with physical labor. It's right there, plain as the noon sun, and never seriously researched because it would spoil the fantasy, that what all those claims really amount to is that people enjoying doing things they enjoy if they have the leisure to enjoy them, for a while, and not as an imposition, and the benefits are short-lived. The whole issue has been circled back and forth a thousand times already, nothing that any new research will change.
 
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