Welcome back to New Day Northwest.
We are three years into the COVID pandemic,
and researchers have now learned
that inflammation appears to be the
cause of some long COVID symptoms.
Doctor Elizabeth Ray is part of the
UW research team that's been looking
into all of this, and she joins me now.
Thank you for being here.
Yes, thank you for having me.
Well, this is important research.
We've seen so many effects
of COVID in so many ways,
but we are dealing with something novel,
right?
I mean, that was what it was called
the novel coronavirus.
So before we get into the study itself,
let's talk about COVID and what
are some conditions of long COVID?
Yes, so long COVID is this newer condition
that we're finding in the population
where they essentially have persistent
effects that last much longer after a lot
of your common symptoms have resolved.
So this usually occurs up to four weeks
after you've been diagnosed with COVID,
after your cough and congestion
has really resolved.
People are still having issues.
With memory impairments or this brain fog
where you can't quite think straight and
we're not really sure what's going on.
And so that's what this study was about,
you know, and this is not something
that people would automatically
connect because COVID is a
respiratory virus for the most part.
Not many people think, hey,
it's affecting my brain.
Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting.
So there's this long brain interface,
this interaction between these two organs,
and they essentially communicate
like a train system does. So.
Some of our collaborators are in Portland.
We're in Seattle.
If you were to get on a train in Portland,
you would end up in Seattle, right?
So if we think of the long being in
Portland and the brain being in Seattle,
there's now this train track that gets
you there and then the train station
that regulates who gets in, who gets out.
And so that's the blood brain
barrier that protects the brain
from all of these interactions.
And so this blood brain barrier
really regulates what gets into the.
Brain. And so the lung can
release inflammatory markers.
Mm-hmm.
That are able to cross into the
brain and have a brain effect.
They can act on this blood brain
barrier and disrupt it and get
other markers into the brain
that can affect brain function.
Or the virus itself,
as we've shown,
can enter the brain and
have detrimental effects.
So how is this S1, the spike
protein getting into the brain?
How's it getting past
that blood brain barrier?
Yeah. So it recognizes this protein.
That's at the blood brain barrier and
it's basically taken up by these cells
and transported across the blood brain
barrier to then enter the brain and
then it can infect cells once it's in
the brain to cause this inflammation
that we're seeing because it's sneaky,
it's basically sneaking in.
Yeah. So the spike protein,
which is present on the surface
of the virus in the pictures,
it's usually this red kind of angry looking
molecule that that looks like a spike.
And it's basically the key
to its entry into the brain.
And so that's what's allowing
it to get there.
And so once it's there,
that's what's causing the fogginess
because it's truly in the blood. Yes.
You used mice to study this S1 protein.
Let's talk a little bit about that.
And some of the mice,
when it got into their brain,
it caused that same inflammation
we're seeing in humans.
Yeah. So just like it can infect the
lungs and cause inflammation there,
we found that it can actually
get into the brain, the spike.
Protein that's present on that
surface of the virus can get into
the brain and infect cells there.
And we think that's what's
causing this neuroinflammation,
the inflammation in the brain,
which causes that brain fog.
So when you were looking at these mice,
did you see the inflammation go away
on its own? What? What are you seeing?
Yeah. So we studied these mice for
one day or four days after they
had this S1 protein in the brain,
and we saw that inflammation
was there after one day.
So just. One day of being in
the brain caused inflammation,
and it lasted up to four days.
That was the longest we studied these mice.
So we would need to do follow-up studies
to determine how quickly it can resolve.
And just like humans, mice are different.
And so depending on which
mouse model you study,
you may get a different effect with
how long it lasts in the brain,
right? Just to give an idea is
that when you're studying mice,
it's a much faster time scale.
It's kind of like human speed up, right?
Exactly. So mice have a much
shorter lifespan. So we can study
them in these shorter time frames
and get an idea of what happens long-term,
which we still don't know yet.
But how can this knowledge help people
and does the vaccine fit into it at all?
Yeah. So this knowledge tells
us that neuroinflammation is
associated with COVID infection.
And so if someone's infected with COVID
and has this neuroinflammatory response,
then it's likely due to neuroinflammation.
So if we can begin to target.
That neuroinflammation,
then we can begin to resolve
this long-term COVID effects.
And the vaccine we know protects
people from even getting COVID, right.
And so if you can prevent from
getting COVID in the 1st place,
then you're not going to
develop this neuroinflammation.
It's also been shown to reduce the
symptoms associated with COVID,
so you have a less severe reaction
to it if you've had the vaccine.
And so if this response isn't as strong.
Then you're not gonna have
as much narrow inflammation.
Many spike proteins floating around,
sneaking their way in there
in your brain. Yeah.
So we can keep them from getting
into the brain in the 1st place.
Thank you so much for taking the
time from your busy important
work that you do to come down
here and talk to us about this.
We'll be checking with you again soon,
I hope. Sounds great.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely alright.