Professor Akiko Iwasaki and the Yale School of Medicine research on Long Covid and post infection syndromes

Dec. 2023: 'Fresenius editor Brigitte Baas speaks with Prof. Akiko Iwasaki'

Prof. Iwasaki: 'what we want ultimately: to develop therapies that will help people with long Covid, ME/CFS and other post-acute infection syndromes.'

Prof. Dr. Akiko Iwasaki: 'ME/CFS is a systemic condition manifested mainly by a variety of different neurological and immunological symptoms and accompanied by chronic fatigue not relieved by sleep or rest.'

'Therefore, we are very excited to use the EKFS prize funding, to compare the immune phenotypes between ME/CFS and long Covid head-to-head to understand the similarities and differences even better. '

Prof. Iwasaki: 'Science takes a long time to understand the causes of disease. It will not be weeks or months before we have a handle on long Covid. However, with the efforts of many groups, including ours, we are getting closer and closer to the knowledge we need. In parallel, many clinical trials are beginning to understand empirically which drugs might benefit people with long Covid. It will take a concerted global effort to get there as soon as possible.'

 

2/15/24, Duke School of Medicine - "Lefkowitz Lecture: Progress in Solving the Mystery of Long COVID"

'Iwasaki said her recent findings provide evidence for 4 possible root causes of Long COVID & other complex, chronic syndromes that happen after acute infections:

- Viral reservoirs of the infecting virus inside organs
- Autoimmune disease triggered by the acute infection
- Tissue damage and dysfunction
- Reactivation of latent viruses, such as Epstein Barr Virus'

 

10/21/21 - 'Immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 by Dr. Akiko Iwasaki'

"How does Long COVID happen? There are two main hypotheses that we are currently pursuing. One is a establishment of viral reservoir in different tissues and this can be either infectious virus or viral remnants, RNA, protein or mixture thereof that can stay in different tissues and trigger chronic inflammation. And the possibility of autoantibodies and auto-reactive T-cells that target different tissues and there's also tissue damage, dysbiosis and latent viral reactivation these are all possibilities that contribute to Long COVID."

"The ultimate goal is to find a better diagnosis and therapy for Long COVID, which millions of people are currently suffering..."