- Hi, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with a really important conversation about the long-term effects of COVID.

And the person who will share with us his expertise is Dr. William Hu, who is the director of the Center for Healthy Aging Research and Chief Cognitive Neurology at Rutgers Health.

Good to see you, Doctor.

- Thank you for having me, Steve.

- You got it.

Doctor, you and your team did an in-depth study of people with long COVID.

A, what were the most significant findings, and B, what's the most important thing for us to be aware of, please?

- Well, number one, the most important finding is that long COVID is not Alzheimer's disease.

At the beginning of the pandemic, after very mild infections, many people started coming to us asking, "Did I suddenly develop Alzheimer's disease," with the memory issues and concentration issues, what we often refer to now as brain fog.

And Alzheimer's disease typically takes about 10 to 20 years to develop.

And then, so it was very important for us to reassure these people through an objective test that even though they had memory issues, it wasn't Alzheimer's disease.

But we also build additional research on this effort and discovered that the signature for long COVID really reflects a some sort of chronic infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

A lot of people say that this may be that people have recovered, developed autoimmune disease.

We didn't find that.

We really found that the signature looks more like acute infection.

- So Doctor, your study found that 50% of the people that you examined improved after two years.

What about the other 50%?

- That's the part we don't know about.

I think we're hopeful that some of these people will have a slower recovery.

Some of the people have recurrent infections.

And so you may have heard that the more infections you have, that perhaps that the longer the symptoms will stick around.

However, if it's true that this is a chronic infection, we may need to develop some sort of treatment strategy for them to help them recover.

- So help us on this, the actual methodology, if you will.

How many patients did you look at?

- We look at hundreds of patients, over about 300, but then only a subgroup of people underwent the spinal fluid collection.

- So, a subset, quote, unquote, "donated spinal fluid," but they also went, underwent a brain MRI?

- About 20% of the 300 people had a brain MRI and then again, a subset of that group had the spinal fluid examination.

- How'd you pick these people?

Did they select themselves?

- They volunteered.

Most of the time, the people will come to us for attention and they, we first got them through the Rutgers Post-COVID Recovery Clinic.

We al we also recruited from the community.

- We're also talking to your colleague, Dr. Perry Halkitis about whole range of issues connected, who's connected to Rutgers Health, who's gonna talk about a whole range of issues connected to not just COVID, but public health issues.

But I'm gonna ask you a question I was, I'm gonna ask him as well later today.

So it's not your expertise, but you're a scientist and I want to have your perspective.

We need to have your perspective on the fact that a significant number of Americans do not trust science, and medicine, and research.

And it was in place before COVID, exacerbated in light of COVID.

Where am I going with this, Doctor, and is it significant from your perspective as a scientist?

I don't trust the Rutgers' study.

I don't trust the government funded study.

There's a conspiracy here.

I'll do what I wanna do.

The mask, nah.

COVID, not that real.

You say?

- Well, I think that I, we see this when we we're both out recruiting participants for studies, as well as is in seeing patients with established diseases in clinic.

New therapies, new tests, why should we trust them?

I think scientists bear a responsibility to communicate clearly and to demonstrate some transparency with the community that we serve.

I think for a long time, scientists did science outta ivory tower and that doesn't work anymore, because that destroys any type of trust that may have been there before COVID.

So, I think it's really important that we communicate with the people living with the disease, as well as their family members, what it is we're trying to do, and then have them be partners in a research journey, not just being subject.

- Along those lines, and I don't, your study did not look at this, but I wonder if it's tied in somehow.

There are people who believe, millions of Americans believe, that there are significant long-term downside effects of the respective COVID vaccines.

What studies have you seen in that regard and what do they tell us, Doctor?

- Well, I think that's very complicated to study that aspect.

And then, there're being a lot of reports- - Why?

Why is it hard?

- Because we don't have a great registry of people before and after they've received the vaccines.

And very similar to what you asked earlier, a lot of the vaccine side effect reporting systems are voluntary and people only report symptoms when they feel it's related to vaccines.

There are a lot of people who don't feel the symptoms related to vaccines or people may feel that it is something entirely unrelated, like a car accident is related to vaccine.

- So, a lot of it's self-reporting?

- There's a lot of self-reporting and there's a lot of self-selection.

- Okay, go back to your study again.

Differentiate for us, Doctor, between brain fog and quote, unquote, "normal forgetfulness."

Like how would I know for someone in their 60s, who had COVID, forgetfulness over where my keys, oh, I have long-term memory issues, I've got brain... How do I, how does someone know the difference?

- Well, number one is a change from baseline.

And many people who develop COVID-related brain fog will say clearly their memory's different before versus after COVID.

So if you develop COVID in January and how you feel in February is distinctly different from December, that's a difference.

And if it's a gradual change, you know, from two years ago to now, it's probably more likely to be age-related changes.

And the other aspect is that when you hear about, people talk about long COVID symptoms, they share some very interesting commonalities.

They don't say that they're that forgetful and they just say, they say that it takes them a long time to do the same thing that would take them very little time before.

And sometimes people say it's like thinking through molasses.

- Real quick before I let you go.

Advice to anyone trying to avoid, whatever the heck that means, getting long COVID.

Are there any... Paxlovid help in that?

I mean, what, if anything, can we do if you get...

I know the best way is to avoid getting COVID.

Not always a guarantee, even if you're doing all the right things, please.

- Yeah, and I think the best thing again is to prevent getting COVID.

And I know that sounds elementary, but it really is key and there are some recent data to suggest that getting Paxlovid treatment early on may reduce the likelihood of long COVID, but I think that remains to be validated.

So the only thing that is for sure is to avoid the initial COVID infection.

- As we do this program, my wife had COVID last week and we stayed away from each other for seven days.

We're fortunate enough to be able to create that distance.

I don't want to get it again, no guarantees, but we have to do everything we can to avoid getting COVID in the first place.

Dr. Hu, I wanna thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you, Steve, for having me.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

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