TLC Sessions - Living with Long Covid

Dr Benjamin Krishna and the Virology & Immunology team at Cambridge University have identified a protein, elevated in the blood of Long Covid patients, that could act as a potential biomarker for the condition.  This week, we spoke to Dr Krishna about their study, published in Science , which sampled the blood of Long Covid patients across several years. They found Interferon Gamma (IFNɣ) at,...

Dr Theoharis Theoharides , aka “The Mast Cell Master”, has been exploring the world of Mast Cells, their influence on our bodily functions, neurology and genetic make up, for over half a century.  The Director of the Center of Excellence for Neuroinflammation Research and Professor at the Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine at Nova Southeastern University joins us this week to discuss the role tha...

Conor Browne, an independent Biorisk Consultant, analyses biosecurity risks for governmental bodies, commercial enterprises and NGOs, aiding with business continuity, forecasting and policy.  He understood that Covid-19 was airborne in February 2020 but, he says, “it’s the first message that sticks”.  In this week’s episode he discusses how our governments’ initial messaging of handwashing and sur...

David Cutler , Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University, has spent his career assessing the economics of healthcare.  Over the past four years he has applied his skills to assessing the cost of Covid , and subsequently Long Covid, on the U.S. economy.  His original analysis, published in JAMA in 2022 , suggested that Long Covid would cost the U.S. economy $2.6 trillion, but with the ch...

Dr Nancy Klimas , Director of the Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine, Nova Southeastern University, is an immunologist internationally renowned for her work in multi-symptom illnesses.  In this week’s episode she explains her work, from HIV through ME/CFS and Gulf War Syndrome, that has led to her having insight and an amazing team to channel efforts into Long Covid research and treatment.  In an...

Dr Rob Wüst , Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Movement and Behaviour Sciences, is an expert cardiac and skeletal muscle metabolism and mitochondrial function.  He and the team at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, published the “PEM study” in Nature Communications , which investigated the muscular changes in Long Covid patients who experience post-exertional malaise (PEM), or “the worsening of f...

Dr Thomas Chelimsky, Professor of Neurology and Director of VCU’s autonomic laboratory, is a specialist in autonomic dysfunction and a vocal advocate for considering the mind and body as one cohesive system.  He, along with his team at the VCU clinic, take a unique brain-body approach to treating Long Covid patients, with success. In this week’s episode he discusses the autonomic issues faced by L...

Dr Andrew Klein , an anaesthetist at the Royal Papworth Hospital Cambridge, runs the Cambridge Iron Clinic where he treats people with Iron and B12 deficiencies.  Since the start of Covid he has seen an increase in people with these deficiencies, many of whom have been diagnosed with Long Covid. In this episode Dr Klein talks us through the overlapping symptom sets that render people debilitated w...

Physiatrist Benjamin Abramoff, M.D. is the Director and Co-founder of the Post Covid Assessment and Recovery Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. An Assistant Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilition, Abramoff used his expertise to co-author the study, published in Cell , that found that serotonin depletion is prevalent in Long Covid patients.   In this week’s episode, Ab...

Tim Henrich is a Professor of Medicine and expert in infectious diseases, focused on chronic viral infections at the University of California, San Francisco. He is another member of the titan Long Covid research team who have tracked patients since the beginning of the pandemic (LIINC study) and are making roads into understanding the mechanism of the disease and potentials for treating it. In thi...

A supplement to Episode 68 - Consultant Neurologist Steven Allder of Re:Cognition Health discusses the way that injury to the brain causes anxiety and depression in Traumatic Brain Injury and could explain some of the mental health impact of Long Covid. Living with Long Covid? How was your week? Website - https://www.tlcsessions.net/ Twitter - @SessionsTlc https://twitter.com/sessionstlc Insta - @...

A supplement to Episode 68 - Consultant Neurologist Steven Allder of Re:Cognition Health explains what tinnitus is and why we are experiencing it in Long Covid. Living with Long Covid? How was your week? Website - https://www.tlcsessions.net/ Twitter - @SessionsTlc https://twitter.com/sessionstlc Insta - @tlcsessions https://www.instagram.com/tlcsessions

Consultant Neurologist Steven Allder of R e:Cognition Health has applied his wealth of experience investigating Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) to understanding the impact of Long Covid on the brain. In this week’s conversation we discuss inflammation of the brain of Long Covid patients which is visible using PET imaging;  Allder believes this inflammation c...

Professor Andrew Shaw, University of Exeter, believes that he has devised a diagnostic test for Long Covid.  His company, Attomarker , have developed a test which can reveal a gap in a patient’s antibody spectrum – their response to acute SARS-COV2 from a finger prick of blood. This gap, he says, has lead to a viral residue that causes the chronic symptoms of Long Covid.  Their hypothesis is that...

Imperial College Professor of Immunology, Danny Altmann  recently published “The immunology of long COVID” , a fantastically comprehensive overview in Nature Reviews Immunology.  In this week’s episode Altmann, to whom we first spoke in the summer of 2021, talks us through some of the highlights of the work he's reviewed - serotonin depletion, gut biopsy findings, anti-virals, monoclonal anti...

Dr. Amy Proal is the President and Research Director of PolyBio Research Foundation , a non-profit organisation that brings together some of the brightest scientific minds to research how infection-associated chronic conditions are studied, diagnosed and treated.  Their work into Long Covid is bringing together some of the leaders in the field to accelerate studies and clinical trials to further d...

Michael Peluso  M.D., an HIV and infectious disease specialist at UCSF, has been studying Long Covid patients since April 2020 ( LIINC Study ).  This, along with his history of working with HIV and other viruses, has given him the knowledge and methods to make some break-throughs into Long Covid pathogenesis, effects and, potentially, treatments.  He, along with his team, has established that Long...

Eric Topol must be one of the leading voices in Long Covid advocacy.  Cardiologist, scientist, author , editor-in-chief of Medscape , and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute , Topol has written about Long Covid in publications from The Lancet and Nature, to The Washington Post.  As a clinician a large proportion of his patients are now Long Covid sufferers and he spends a huge...

Harlan Krumholtz, cardiologist and Professor of Medicine at Yale University, is attempting to move the needle when it comes to patient-centric care in Long Covid and beyond.  Working closely with immunologist Akiko Iwasaki, Krumholz not only looks at the heart when it comes to his research into Long Covid. Together this Long Covid power couple are trying to design studies and trials considering th...

Credited as being the founder of functional medicine, Dr Leo Galland has spent the past 40 years trying to create a patient-centred version of healthcare. Using pharmaceuticals, supplements, lifestyle and complimentary therapies he has drawn on his vast knowledge of patients and holistic healing, to create a comprehensive protocol for Long Covid patients .  Designed to remove any active virus, reb...

Researcher Vicky van der Togt and virologist Dr Jeremy Rossman have spent the past 2.5 years trying to help Long Covid patients and research via their organisation Research-Aid Networks .   Their latest paper, published in Frontiers , hypothesises that it is an acid-base disruption that drives the symptomatology of Long Covid.  In this week's episode we discuss the impacts of dysregulated pH,...

Dr Wes Ely , a pulmonary and critical care doctor, has built a remarkable resource for Long Covid sufferers within the Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction and Survivorship Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, of which he is co-director.  A professor, using his knowledge of his clinical knowledge and his extensive research into debilitating brain disease, he has d...

Molecular Virologist, Bhupesh Prusty, promised to reveal more when we last spoke, four weeks ago.  Here he presents what he believes to be a biomarker for Long Covid, explaining the mechanism, its similarity to ME/CFS, what his research and findings have proven, and how we might take this research forward to develop further understanding and treatment strategies. Living with Long Covid? How was yo...

Lavanya Visvabharathy, a T cell immunologist at Northwestern University, Chicago, has led extensive studies into Long Covid, but we learned that some of those studies, despite their merit and rigour, were proving hard to publish in top tier medical journals.  In this week's episode we lift the lid on the process of scientific publishing, talking through the challenges that Visvabharathy has f...

Dr Jim Jackson , research professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre, does not believe that Long Covid is all in your mind, but he has found that treating the brain, as if it has a brain injury, can help Long Covid recovery.  In this week’s episode Dr Jackson explains his clinical experience of the neurological impact of Long Covid from brain fog to anxiety, PTSD...