By David Tuller, DrPH
I’ve posted two past interviews with David Putrino (here and here) about long Covid, ME/CFS, and related issues. Dr Putrino, a neuroscientist and physical therapist, is director of rehabilitation innovation at the Mt Sinai Health System in New York. Early in the pandemic, the rehabiliation center he directs began seeing patients with prolonged symptoms following acute bouts of Covid-19. (The previous sentence has been clarified to indicate that Dr Putrino’s center has seen patients; he himself is not licensed to practice in New York.) He has worked closely in the past few years with Yale immunobiologist Akiko Iwasaki. This week they published a major study in Nature called “Distinguishing features of Long COVID identified through immune profiling,” in which they tested blood from those without and without long Covid and reported significant differences in multiple parameters. Dr Putrino and I recently discussed the study’s findings, what they mean for treatment, and upcoming plans to assess whether similar patterns are seen in ME/CFS patients as well as those who report prolonged symptoms after a covid vaccine.
Excellent – could you possibly make this a regular feature, Davids?
I was just settling in to enjoy it when David Putrino rattled off a whole load of things that doctors should be looking at with regard to Long Covid. My heart sank a bit. Oh no, I thought, what are the chances that any of this would happen with the NHS in the UK? It was good to hear later in the interview that both Davids appreciate the problems that patients are up against, and particularly in countries with public health systems. (Don’t get me wrong, I think that public health systems are good but they do need to be funded properly – you can’t get good healthcare on the cheap.)
According to Dr Bruce Patterson, there is a test now for Long Covid and there is a treatment for it. It’s on Youtube.
So good to hear the balanced approach, an all rounded understanding of the barriers we face. Combined with a forthright approach, to the difficulties dealing with the level of complexity these illnesses have, fills me with hope.
We now have two David’s against the Goliath of healthcare and politics. Rest assured we are gathering the stones of voices for you to use.
Thank you both for your commitment to us.
Great to hear David Putrino talking about medical gaslighting which is also a common topic amongst people with rare conditions. Likewise it is good to know that medically induced PTSD (aka ‘a sane response to an insane situation’) is being recognised. Unfortunately it is often ongoing or repeated rather than ‘post’, both for people with other invisible disabilities and for people with conditions that mostly impact women, such as migraine, MdDS, FND, FND symptoms that develop downstream from taking/withdrawing from antidepressants etc etc. It’ll be interesting to see if the FND Society respond.
‘Follow the money’ is spot on, too. The term ‘functional’ got mentioned at a UK Migraine Action meeting several years ago (after Brexit but before Covid) and the lovely neurologist said ‘Ugh. Blame the patients, it’s cheaper.’ CT – I appreciate your thoughts and comments about the situation in the UK.
Thank you, David and David.
I could listen to David and David talk about this for hours. Thanks for doing this interview, it added some helpful details and fleshed out the other coverage that the paper got. Looking forward to the team’s future papers.