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

RedFox said:
This is pretty good news. Unfortunately no details like staffing or funding that would allow us to estimate how much research they'll be undertaking. Regardless, it's part of a trend of increasing awareness of ME/CFS, long Covid, and similar.
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Unfortunately, I couldn't find any information on funding. When I googled them I at least found out that they are currently recruiting for one position, probably not the worst of signs https://www.ziprecruiter.com/c/Yale...cialist/-in-New-Haven,CT?jid=94f422852473ad1d.

Staff is listed on their official website https://medicine.yale.edu/cii/staff/. They also have a list of "members".

A large focus of the center is also the development of vaccines, which is Iwasaki's speciality. Whilst an interesting, extremely important and of course life saving field of study, this probably won't have any effect on people already suffering from post-viral conditions. Perhaps it can be beneficial to attract funding though.
 
EndME said:
A large focus of the center is also the development of vaccines, which is Iwasaki's speciality. Whilst an interesting, extremely important and of course life saving field of study,
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And profitable. Wouldn't want to ignore the Bayh-Doyle Act.

Remember when academic research had the feel of being above smear, above the mercenary? Some people feel that may have changed a little back in 1980 with Bayh-Doyle.
 
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ME/CFS, Long COVID, and Chronic Lyme Disease Research Aided by $3 Million in Donor Gifts to Yale School of Medicine

On January 5, 2023, Anna (a pseudonym to protect her family’s privacy) got up early in the morning, took her mom’s car, and drove to a local state park where she ended her life. She was 40 years old and a mother of two children, ages 3 and 6.

Anna had suffered from Long COVID after contracting COVID-19 in January 2022, which manifested to myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) two months later. ME/CFS is a disabling, chronic condition that affects the nervous and immune systems. Often called an invisible disease, ME/CFS is frequently misunderstood and not taken seriously by health care providers and the public.
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Anna was confined to her bed due to her extreme exhaustion, pains, and tremors from ME/CFS. As her disease progressed, she could barely move, lost her ability to speak, and could not tolerate light or sound. Her pervasive brain fog made it difficult to think. ME/CFS crippled her mentally and emotionally. “Anna went from being hopeful, to somewhat hopeful, to despair and sadness,” recalls her mother.

During Anna’s last two months, signs were posted on her bedroom walls to communicate her needs: “Water,” “Food,” “Too Cold,” “Too Hot,” and “No Energy to Do That.” The only times that she could see her children were when her husband would ask them to say good morning to her. Health care professionals from whom she sought treatment dismissed her symptoms. Her mother came to the following conclusion about the medical community’s attitude toward Anna’s condition: “Since the disease is not quantitative, we can’t measure it. If we can’t test for it, then we can’t cure it.”

Anna lost her independence when she had to rely on family members to provide her with 24/7 care. “Anna didn’t want to go through life being an emotional, physical, and financial burden on our family,” says her mother.

The suicide rate among ME/CFS patients has grown at an alarming rate. According to research in Britain and Spain, people suffering from ME/CFS are six times more likely to die by suicide than the general population. In sharing Anna’s story, her mother hopes that research can someday discover a cure for ME/CFS
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Earlier this year, philanthropist Emily Fairbairn awarded $2 million to Yale School of Medicine to fund the research of Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and professor of dermatology, of molecular, cellular & developmental biology, and of epidemiology (infectious diseases), on Long COVID and chronic Lyme disease, and Carol Sirot gifted $1 million to the school to help Iwasaki discover a biomarker for ME/CFS.
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https://medicine.yale.edu/news-arti...on-in-donor-gifts-to-yale-school-of-medicine/
 
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Sly Saint said:
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-arti...on-in-donor-gifts-to-yale-school-of-medicine/
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I am so glad this project has funding. Bring on the treatments.

But still there will always be sick people, as long as there are people.

I find it so unacceptably tragic that any sick person should be made to take on the view that they individually are the “burden” while there exists a whole huge society that could quite easily with no great effort at all, choose to value, care for and treat them.

This woman wasn’t a burden to her family because she got sick. Her family were burdened by a society that wasn’t going to support them or to support her. They were burdened by watching her made to suffer. By having to learn how to support someone without being shown by society how to do this. They were burdened by a punishing economic system of extraction.
 
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Time: 100 most influential people of 2024 — Akiko Iwasaki

https://time.com/6964230/akiko-iwasaki/
By Anthony Fauci

Her deep appreciation of the regulation of the human immune system has allowed her to lead the way in delineating the mechanisms of how it reacts to COVID-19, and the consequences of Long COVID. Her expertise in innate immunity—or how the immune system first reacts to pathogens—is providing key insights into Long COVID, validating patient experiences and informing treatment strategies.
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Posts moved from News from the USA

8/7/24, EMBO Podcast: 'The right place at the right time' with Akiko Iwasaki'

Iwasaki: "I'm super interested in this long-term consequence of an acute infection with viruses and this is highlighted by Long COVID that's happening all around the world - millions are suffering from it. And I think that if not for the need - the medical need - it's also scientifically a big challenge to crack this kind of disease process that occur with a seemingly acute infection with the virus and it's not restricted to COVID, of course. There are so many other viruses and other pathogens that can lead to long-term consequences, so that's an area that a young scientist can really get into and will be continue to be a problem that needs to be solved going forward."
 
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3/12/24, 'Root Causes of Long COVID: An Immunology Discussion by MaskTogetherAmerica'

Iwasaki: "We are working on looking at four major root causes....first one being viral reservoir...second hypothesis is autoimmunity..third hypothesis is dysbiosis of microbiome...fourth is tissue damage or inflammation that is chronically triggered.."

"It's very important for us to understand the root causes of disease because only then we will have better diagnosis as well as treatment options that can properly treat the inciting causes of these diseases.."
 
3/10/23, Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics: 'Immunology of long COVID'

Iwasaki: "Medically unexplained post-acute syndromes, have for the most part, been ignored and understudied...ME/CFS..overwhelming literature pointing to a common overlapping cause.."

"We need a lot more studies to understand what are the factors that are driving chronic diseases at later phases of infection - and who recovers - and who doesn't - and in order to provide not only insights but therapeutic potentials for the people who have Long COVID. So currently we're working with several hypotheses four of which are listed here.."
 
3/29/22, IUIS Immunology Without Borders - 'Akiko Iwasaki - Immune responses to SARS-CoV-2'

"This is a very important aspect of this pandemic..there's a parallel pandemic..symptoms that are debilitating..there's an urgent need to study the pathobiology.."

"A number of unexplained new onset symptoms that include fatigue, post-exertional malaise and many many neurocognitive deficits as well as respiratory, cardiac, and musculoskeletal issues..."
 
11/19/20, MIT Dept. of Biology: Akiko Iwasaki: "Immunology: Antibodies"

"This kind of hints at the possibility that long-hauler disease may be driven by an overt immune response...potentially even autoimmune disease..'

'So we are looking into that now to see if there's any link between long-hauler phenotype to autoimmune disease or other inflammatory conditions...'
 
9/23/20, Herbert Irving Cancer Center at Columbia: Akiko Iwasaki, Virtual COVID-19 Symposium

"Long-haulers..especially..the neurological manifestations..brain fog..difficulty remembering things..we found evidence for neurons in the cortex of a patient who died of COVID to be very fully infected with this virus, so this raises a possibility of whether a direct infection of the nervous system or inflammation within the nervous system, might contribute to some of the neurological diseases that we're seeing..."
 
Hey @Dakota15. I appreciate you digging up all these old news articles but am wandering whether you had any more specific goals in mind? Is it supposed to be a form of documentation and reminder what has been said over the years (I often find that studies I have long since forgotten about and can't remember I had ever heard of know, but when I look at them on S4ME I'll find them already discussed often either having read that discussion or even commented on it, and in that respect I can see S4ME being a sort of very useful bibliography), to illustrate how much is being said, to show that most people are just saying the same thing year in and year out or something else?
 
9/29/23, 'How Do We Speed Up Long Covid Research? | With Prof. Akiko Iwasaki'

"I'm well aware of the frustration - I'm also frustrated myself - even though we are working at lightning speed...we want to get this right..I am optimistic. One of the organizers of a meeting I just went to said you know, I've never seen progress happen on any infectious disease this fast - I mean we are making very fast discovery, but it's also very frustrating for the patients because they don't have a diagnosis, tools, they don't have the right kind of therapeutics that they can benefit from immediately so yeah I think we just have to keep going and hopefully there's going to be enough funding for us to keep going collectively..."

@EndME - Appreciate it. Just documentation / record-keeping / knowing what's out there (then being able to track if it changes over time etc.)
 
7/10/24, Prof. Akiko Iwasaki: 'Immunology of Post-Acute Infection Syndromes'

"I just want to highlight the fact that there are many medically unexplained post-acute infection syndromes..after encounters with distinct pathogens. SARS-CoV-2..just the newest member"

"Throughout the pandemic, I've been really appreciating how much the patients know about their own diseases and that they're the experts of diseases such as ME/CFS and Long Covid."

"So, without their equal participation in our research, we wouldn't be able to make as much progress as we are doing today. So, there are many of these infectious agents that can lead to this post-acute phase of infectious disease, but there are common symptoms that are shared by many."

"I'm just gonna go through some of the key features that I'd like to convey today. One is that Long COVID patients have elevated type 2 T-cell immunity. So there are two kinds - well, at least three kinds — of immune types. And type 2 immunity is often considered to be optimal for fighting helminths infections or allergy. These are the kinds of immune responses that you see. And for some reason, people with Long COVID, they have elevated levels of cytokines, such as IL-4 and IL-6, that's induced in CD4 T-cells and CD8 T-cells. And if you look at the participants with Long COVID, they're really the only ones that have IL-4/IL-6 double positive T-cell populations. Second, along with this viral reservoir hypothesis, we see elevated levels of antibody responses to the spike protein in people with Long COVID."
 
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