fFor the US immunologist Akiko Iwasaki, there is no change for the better after the Corona crisis – and thus no slacking off in the fight against the epidemic, because the doctor at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven deals with, as she says, “Pandemic within the Pandemic”. What is meant is Long Covid. Not only that, however, because the late effects of a Sars-CoV-2 infection, which last for months and often years, are so diverse, so individually different and so related to other serious chronic diseases that she and her colleagues now describe Long Covid as an “organic post -acute infectious syndrome” (PAIS). Triggered by viruses and mediated in particular by an immune system that often gets out of control, patients are affected by a wide variety of symptoms. “At least 65 million people worldwide,” the World Health Organization recently announced, are affected by Long Covid, i.e. around ten percent of those infected. Iwasaki says there are probably many more, and the number is increasing because the problem has been growing since the omicron phase due to multiple infections.
Not everything is known about the decisive mechanisms that take place in the body during the disease. But Iwasaki, like numerous international research groups, including some from Germany, has already provided groundbreaking information during the pandemic about the apparently very different disease processes that all lead to Long Covid. For this, among other things, she was awarded the Else Kröner Fresenius Prize for Medical Research, which was awarded in Frankfurt am Main at the beginning of this week and is endowed with 2.5 million euros.
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