Discussed in this episode: A new article in the journal Cell finds Long Covid associated with reduced levels of serotonin circulating in the bloodstream. (The authors’ explanation: the persistent presence of the virus, and/or its fragments, causes the body to crank out more type I interferons. The interferons cause  inflammation in the gut that reduces uptake … Continued

UpFront

House Speaker Vote; Plus, New Report Shows Impact of Covid-19 on K-12 Education

0:08 — John Nichols is National Affairs Correspondent for the Nation  0:33 — Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University.  Chelsea Waite, senior researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. Morgan Polikoff, is an Associate Professor at the USC Rossier School of Education  


Discussed in this episode: COVID hospitalizations continue to trend up, nearly doubling rates from mid-summer. (That’s a large increase from a low baseline: in most of the country, hospitalization rates are still what the CDC considers “low.”) A new observational study using patient data from Stockholm suggests the percent of COVID cases that result in … Continued

Discussed in this episode: A new paper in Science Translational Medicine draws results from animal experiments, human samples, and human autopsies to suggest a mechanism for some cases of Long Covid: the virus binds to a protein on our cells’ mitochondria and can enduringly alter their function. Podcast music credit:  Now Son by Podington Bear, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 … Continued

Discussed in this episode: New research published in Nature examined if people who got infected without showing symptoms had something in common genetically. They did: a mutation on the  HLA-B (that’s short for Human Leukocyte Antigen) gene. In the laboratory, T-cell samples collected from those people *before* infection reacted strongly to SARS-COV2, suggesting the mutation helps … Continued

Filling in for Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Jesse Strauss hosts Covid Calls this week, featuring Dr. John Swartzberg, Clinical Professor Emeritus of Infectious Diseases at UC Berkeley. Discussed in this episode: Covid infectiousness correlated with particular blood types: https://fortune.com/well/2023/06/27/which-blood-type-greater-risk-getting-covid-19/ The childhood diabetes rate has risen in correlation with covid – we discuss whether there’s a causal link: … Continued