Transcript

9.24.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome, this is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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Speaker 1: I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine, dated September, October, 2026.
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Speaker 1: As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading service intended
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Speaker 1: for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
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Speaker 1: make it difficult to read printed material. Please join me
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Speaker 1: now for the first part of the article titled, For
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Speaker 1: Many Americans, COVID is Still a Chronic Disabling Disease. These
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Speaker 1: Scientists Are Working Tirelessly to Bring Them Relief. Long COVID
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Speaker 1: saps the strength and vitality of patients who have little
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Speaker 1: recourse to fight it. A team of specialists, including an
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Speaker 1: afflicted researcher working mostly from her bed, is looking for answers.
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Speaker 1: By Mike Mariani. Julia Moore Vogel was living with her
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Speaker 1: husband Bobby and their two-year-old daughter in the sun-drenched suburbs
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Speaker 1: of San Diego when the COVID-19 pandemic swept into the
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Speaker 1: United States on commercial airplanes and cruise ships. Vogel, who
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Speaker 1: has both a Ph.D. in computational biology and medicine and
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Speaker 1: an MBA from Cornell University, worked for Scripps Research at
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Speaker 1: its facilities in La Jolla. She cherished her job managing
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Speaker 1: a part of an ambitious study funded by the National
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Speaker 1: Institutes of Health, NIH, known as the All of Us
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Speaker 1: Research Program, which gathers health information from a vast cross-section
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Speaker 1: of Americans, collecting biological samples, health records, and other medical
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Speaker 1: data from nearly 750,000 people that might one day yield
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Speaker 1: treatments for devastating diseases. Her career allowed her to work
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Speaker 1: at the interface of science and business, Vogel told me,
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Speaker 1: helping ensure that research discoveries broke through academia to affect
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Speaker 1: drug development and how doctors practiced medicine. A former college
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Speaker 1: cross-country runner, Vogel spent afternoons jogging through the snaking footpaths
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Speaker 1: of Torrey Pines State Park or pushing a stroller around
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Speaker 1: her neighborhood, and she relished weekends playing with her daughter
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Speaker 1: in the sand while her husband surfed the breakers careened
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Speaker 1: into the shallows off Carmel Valley. I used to squeeze
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Speaker 1: so much into my days and weeks, she said. During
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Speaker 1: the pandemic's first few months, when people were confined to
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Speaker 1: their homes under lockdown orders, schools were closed and the
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Speaker 1: country was struggling to source N95 masks and ventilators, Vogel
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Speaker 1: and her family were extremely cautious. She only left her
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Speaker 1: home to watch her daughter play outside, while her husband
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Speaker 1: went out for groceries. They wore masks everywhere. Nevertheless, one
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Speaker 1: day that summer, Vogel noticed that she could not taste
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Speaker 1: her morning peppermint tea. Her sense of smell faded, too.
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Speaker 1: She was diagnosed with COVID a few days later. Even now,
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Speaker 1: the exact date she got sick, July 8, 2020, remains
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Speaker 1: impossible for her to forget. Vogel's infection laid her up
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Speaker 1: with a fever, shortness of breath, and intense fatigue. Just
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Speaker 1: as she was expecting to recover, however, in the weeks
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Speaker 1: that followed her body and mind faltered. She felt her
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Speaker 1: energy being sapped away. She had battering migraines that left
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Speaker 1: her reeling in bed, disoriented with pain. She took one
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Speaker 1: week off from her position at Scripps, then another, and
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Speaker 1: then a third. Finally, she returned to remote work in August.
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Speaker 1: but within a few hours she intuited that something wasn't right.
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Speaker 1: I was looking at tasks that would normally take me
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Speaker 1: a very short amount of time, and they just felt impossible.
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Speaker 1: Vogel struggled with concentration and memory recall. She found herself
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Speaker 1: mixing up words and phrases in everyday conversation. Perhaps most unsettling,
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Speaker 1: whenever Vogel exerted herself, attending doctor's appointments, taking her daughter
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Speaker 1: to playdates, visiting a local park— her other symptoms grew
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Speaker 1: worse afterward. She eventually learned of others who were similarly suffering.
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Speaker 1: Terms like long haulers and long COVID were already in
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Speaker 1: use by May 2020, but clinicians were hesitant about making
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Speaker 1: such diagnoses, and the condition had yet to be fully defined.
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Speaker 1: It was an early sign of the grueling uphill battle
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Speaker 1: facing long COVID patients. Still, by late August 2020, Vogel
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Speaker 1: strongly suspected that she suffered from this chronic form of COVID,
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Speaker 1: whatever it was. Most Scripps staff members in Lajala began
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Speaker 1: returning to the office in March 2021. Vogel, who continued
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Speaker 1: to work remotely, never did. By 2021, she had trouble
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Speaker 1: walking around her neighborhood. By 2022, she avoided stairs for
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Speaker 1: fear that the exertion would leave her bedridden. At 37,
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Speaker 1: she moved with the frailty and deliberativeness of someone twice
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Speaker 1: her age, and she eventually acquired a wheelchair to reduce
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Speaker 1: the burden on her stamina. In two years, she'd gone
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Speaker 1: from a spry scientist and an active wife and mother
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Speaker 1: to somebody who spent 18 hours a day in her bedroom,
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Speaker 1: a drab refuge where she slept, recovered, and worked using
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Speaker 1: a bed desk that sat atop her mattress. A researcher
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Speaker 1: by nature and by training, Vogel started stealing what time
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Speaker 1: she could to learn about her conditions. She scoured online
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Speaker 1: support groups, read all the scientific papers she could find,
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Speaker 1: and devoured the work of journalists like Ed Yong, who
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Speaker 1: were chronicling the emergence of this baffling new condition. At
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Speaker 1: a time when people were dying from COVID at almost
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Speaker 1: unfathomable rates, by mid-2022, more than a million Americans had
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Speaker 1: been killed by the virus, long COVID patients struggled to
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Speaker 1: seize the narrative of their arguably less urgent condition from
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Speaker 1: skeptics who accused them of malingering or of psychosomatic afflictions.
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Speaker 1: In the meantime, long COVID treatment clinics began sprouting up
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Speaker 1: to cater to desperate patients. By 2022, one patient support group,
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Speaker 1: the COVID-19 Long Hauler Advocacy Project, had compiled a list
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Speaker 1: of 400 such practices nationwide, offering everything from rehabilitation and
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Speaker 1: physical therapy to lifestyle modifications to help manage chronic illness.
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Speaker 1: A handful of major medical centers, including New York's Mount
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Speaker 1: Sinai Hospital, Yale New Haven Hospital, and Stanford University, offered
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Speaker 1: more specialized care. Their clinicians embraced an improvisatory treatment approach,
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Speaker 1: making off-label use of antivirals, immune system regulators, and anti-inflammatory
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Speaker 1: drugs in the hopes that they might reduce symptoms, if
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Speaker 1: not directly address long COVID's still-mysterious root causes. To this day,
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Speaker 1: no medications have been approved by the FDA to specifically
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Speaker 1: treat long COVID. As patients clamored for the American medical
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Speaker 1: establishment to recognize long COVID's severity and commit resources and
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Speaker 1: expertise to illuminating it, Vogel's boss, renowned killer scientist Eric Topol,
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Speaker 1: invited her to participate in a landmark scientific literature review
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Speaker 1: of the existing research. The project gave Vogel the opportunity
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Speaker 1: to collaborate with Hannah Davis and Lisa McCorkle, co-founders of
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Speaker 1: an influential cohort of patients working as researchers, scientists, and
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Speaker 1: advocates known as the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, PLRC. The paper
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Speaker 1: that collaboration yielded, Long COVID, Major Findings, Mechanisms, and Recommendations,
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Speaker 1: published in Nature Reviews Microbiology in January 2023, has since
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Speaker 1: been viewed online 2 million times, and it has been
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Speaker 1: cited 4,000 times by other scientists, putting it in the
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Speaker 1: top tier of academic papers published that year. Topol told
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Speaker 1: Vogel that it's among the most cited papers he has
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Speaker 1: worked on during a celebrated five-decade career. Not only did
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Speaker 1: the paper serve as a crucial overview of the first
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Speaker 1: three years of long COVID research, a scattershot landscape that
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Speaker 1: outside researchers struggled to get a handle on. But, according
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Speaker 1: to Vogel, patients also routinely brought copies of the paper
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Speaker 1: to their doctor's appointments as a way of substantiating their
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Speaker 1: symptoms and the validity of their disease. For Vogel, the
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Speaker 1: paper proved to be a valuable professional segue. Having co-authored
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Speaker 1: such an influential and highly cited article instantly legitimized me
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Speaker 1: as a long COVID researcher, she told me. and yet
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Speaker 1: at home, Vogel and her husband were scrambling. Their house
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Speaker 1: was rarely cleaned, with toys strewn on the floor, dirty
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Speaker 1: dishes stacked up in the kitchen, laundry mingling in unwieldy piles.
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Speaker 1: Even after her mother, Teresa Moore, began flying in from
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Speaker 1: upstate New York every other month to help with cooking, cleaning,
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Speaker 1: child care, and other chores, the family was overwhelmed. I
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Speaker 1: was in survival mode all the time, Vogel recalled. Since
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Speaker 1: those early days, when nobody knew how long long haulers
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Speaker 1: would be sick or how many people were suffering, we
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Speaker 1: have gained a much clearer picture of the condition. The
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Speaker 1: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's oft-cited, conceptually broad definition
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Speaker 1: describes long COVID as a chronic condition following a COVID
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Speaker 1: infection that is, quote, present for at least three months
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Speaker 1: as a continuous relapsing and remitting or progressive disease state
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Speaker 1: that affects one or more organ systems, end quote. The
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Speaker 1: PLRC and other like-minded groups have outlined more than 200
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Speaker 1: associated symptoms, including fatigue, muscle weakness, joint pain, sore throat, insomnia,
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Speaker 1: difficulty concentrating, memory issues, and post-exertional malaise, a uniquely punishing
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Speaker 1: impairment that exacerbates other symptoms following what were once routine activities.
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Speaker 1: Estimates vary widely about how many people are affected by
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Speaker 1: long COVID, but conservative assessments suggest that perhaps 21 million
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Speaker 1: American adults, or more than 8%, have experienced symptoms relating
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Speaker 1: to long COVID. and that the illness routinely keeps more
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Speaker 1: than one million adults out of the workforce. A subset
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Speaker 1: of patients suffers from a severe manifestation of the condition,
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Speaker 1: languishing with chronic pain, cognitive dysfunction, and debilitating fatigue. This subset,
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Speaker 1: which includes Vogel, is relatively small. Amy Prohl, a microbiologist
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Speaker 1: and co-founder of PolyBio, a nonprofit dedicated to seeking treatments
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Speaker 1: for chronic conditions associated with infections like COVID, estimates that
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Speaker 1: this extreme form affects perhaps 2% of people who get
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Speaker 1: a COVID infection, a figure that could still represent over
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Speaker 1: 2 million people. But, Prohl says, for them it is
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Speaker 1: totally life-altering, leaving them not only disabled, but also struggling
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Speaker 1: to work or carry out basic chores and often scrabbling
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Speaker 1: to make ends meet. Organizations like PROLS and the PLRC
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Speaker 1: have been essential in raising awareness about long COVID and
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Speaker 1: in advancing research into the disease. Their aim has always
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Speaker 1: been to bring more medical researchers into the field so
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Speaker 1: that scientists can more clearly define the disease by clarifying
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Speaker 1: its pathology and identify biomarkers that doctors can use to
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Speaker 1: definitively diagnose it. And in the past few years, Virologists, microbiologists,
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Speaker 1: infectious disease doctors, and other medical researchers have answered that call,
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Speaker 1: dedicating themselves to studying this stubbornly opaque condition with increasing success.
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Speaker 1: There is still a ways to go, but the hope
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Speaker 1: is that by tracing the labyrinthine pathways by which this
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Speaker 1: acute viral infection becomes a chronic multisystem illness, the vital
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Speaker 1: first steps toward understanding long COVID and to effectively treating
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Speaker 1: it are within reach. The Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital
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Speaker 1: and Trauma Center is a dense, towering cluster of brick
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Speaker 1: and concrete buildings in the city's mission district, adjacent to
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Speaker 1: the 101 freeway and less than two miles west of
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Speaker 1: the bay. On a drizzly, overcast week in February, I
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Speaker 1: traveled there to meet with Michael Peluso, an infectious disease
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Speaker 1: clinician and researcher, and his team at the University of California,
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Speaker 1: San Francisco. the university opened a sleek new facility called
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Speaker 1: Pride Hall on the hospital campus in 2023, and many
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Speaker 1: of its hospital faculty and researchers have their offices and
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Speaker 1: labs in the building. The skies were scuffed with gray
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Speaker 1: when I met Peluso and his colleagues in their offices there. Peluso,
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Speaker 1: a measured, even-keeled scientist with a mop of black hair,
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Speaker 1: dark stubble, and brown eyes, runs a program at the
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Speaker 1: university called Long-Term Impact of Infection with Novel Coronavirus, abbreviated
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Speaker 1: as LIINC. In its Pride Hall headquarters, the program shares
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Speaker 1: a floor with UCSF researchers working on the NIH's RECOVER program,
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Speaker 1: which is also investigating long COVID. Peluso began his career
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Speaker 1: studying HIV, probing the virus's complex effects on the brain
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Speaker 1: and nervous system. I was really interested in understanding how
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Speaker 1: HIV persists in a person's body, what the consequences of
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Speaker 1: that persistence are, and whether we can alter that, he
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Speaker 1: told me. He focused specifically on how HIV viral reservoirs,
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Speaker 1: remnants of the virus that hid inside tissue cells throughout
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Speaker 1: the body, drove neuroinflammation and vascular damage, among other impacts.
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Speaker 1: and whether helping patients suppress the virus with antiretroviral drugs
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Speaker 1: could alleviate its knock-on effects. Then, you know, 2020 happened.
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Speaker 1: When COVID began spreading in San Francisco, Peluso asked his mentor,
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Speaker 1: the distinguished HIV researcher Stephen Deeks, to explore whether they
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Speaker 1: could help address the public health crisis. The pair had
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Speaker 1: been running a long-term observational study of HIV patients, but
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Speaker 1: the San Francisco Department of Public Health abruptly paused it
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Speaker 1: amid the city's lockdown measures. With their study on hold
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Speaker 1: and the city under strict stay-at-home orders, Peluso and Deeks
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Speaker 1: devised an idea. What if they repurposed their existing resources, infrastructure, researchers,
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Speaker 1: study protocols, access to state-of-the-art laboratories to track COVID's long-term impacts?
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Speaker 1: We had no idea how SARS-CoV-2 COV-2 was going to
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Speaker 1: affect health, Deeks told me, referring to the specific coronavirus
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Speaker 1: that causes COVID-19. But based on their experience with HIV,
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Speaker 1: the researchers knew that infectious diseases are more complex than
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Speaker 1: they at first appear. Our assumption was that it was
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Speaker 1: going to have some long-term implications, Peluso said. There was
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Speaker 1: just something about the speed, scale, and severity of SARS-CoV-2
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Speaker 1: as it emerged that made it clear that it wasn't
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Speaker 1: going to be simple. Indeed, within the study's first month
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Speaker 1: in April 2020, Peluso and his team were already meeting
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Speaker 1: patients who reported an uneven recovery, with their strength and
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Speaker 1: vitality nowhere near their pre-illness baseline. In response, Peluso went on,
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Speaker 1: We brought together clinical researchers like me, epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, biostatisticians,
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Speaker 1: and lab medicine people to try to understand all aspects
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Speaker 1: of the post-acute phase of COVID. The result was what
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Speaker 1: Deeks believed to be the first longitudinal cohort of non-hospitalized
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Speaker 1: patients who had COVID. The Link offices are modern, if unremarkable,
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Speaker 1: a maze of white cubicles and cluttered desks anchored by
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Speaker 1: an elegant break room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city's
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Speaker 1: billowing skyline. Peluso and I took an elevator down to
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Speaker 1: the first floor, where a full wing is dedicated to
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Speaker 1: seeing the 2,000 or so patients enrolled in LINC's large
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Speaker 1: observational study or the program's various long COVID studies, trials
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Speaker 1: testing the effectiveness of monoclonal antibodies, as well as drugs
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Speaker 1: such as the antiviral Paxlovid and the rheumatoid arthritis medication Baricitinib.
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Speaker 1: Then we trudged through the rain to a neighboring building,
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Speaker 1: where Link carries out lumbar punctures, tissue biopsies, and other
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Speaker 1: invasive procedures to collect biospecimens for study and experimentation. In
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Speaker 1: one hallway, we passed a bronze plaque dated July 25, 1983,
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Speaker 1: commemorating the first AIDS ward, where caregivers, quote, gathered to
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Speaker 1: confront a new epidemic, end quote. The hospital was one
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Speaker 1: of the country's first to treat HIV-AIDS and many UCSF
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Speaker 1: clinicians became pioneers in researching the lethal virus, which was
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Speaker 1: killing thousands of gay men in San Francisco at the time.
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Speaker 1: With long COVID, Peluso sees another opportunity for the university
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Speaker 1: and the hospital to serve as trailblazers. Both research programs
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Speaker 1: emerged from a time of chaos and uncertainty, he said,
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Speaker 1: working in a place that has not been afraid to
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Speaker 1: tackle those types of hard problems amid that uncertainty and
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Speaker 1: having that sort of legacy. that was really important to
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Speaker 1: providing meaning and purpose at the beginning. During my trip,
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Speaker 1: I was surprised to find that many researchers said that
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Speaker 1: long COVID could ultimately prove to be a naughtier, more
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Speaker 1: elusive disease than HIV-AIDS. Tim Henrich, a translational virologist at UCSF,
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Speaker 1: invoked a daunting analogy to convey its complexity. When Henrich
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Speaker 1: was around 10, His cousins gave him a formidable gift
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Speaker 1: for his birthday. It was a thousand-piece puzzle, he recalled.
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Speaker 1: Rather than each piece having a fragment of an image
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Speaker 1: only on one side, however, the pieces had the same
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Speaker 1: image rotated 90 degrees on the back, requiring that he
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Speaker 1: effectively complete two puzzles at once. That's like long COVID,
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Speaker 1: Henrik said. It's not just that we're looking at one picture.
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Speaker 1: We're looking at multiple pictures that are offsetting. There are
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Speaker 1: several hypotheses about how the SARS-CoV-2 virus takes root in
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Speaker 1: the body and evolves into the chronic condition we call
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Speaker 1: long COVID, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. One
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Speaker 1: is that the body's ongoing effort to eradicate an acute
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Speaker 1: COVID infection can reactivate other latent viruses. The immune system
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Speaker 1: is continuously keeping a host of low-level infections in check,
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Speaker 1: including Epstein-Barr virus and cytomegalovirus. These reactivations, says Prohl, of
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Speaker 1: polybio then spread to new sites and drive more chronic
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Speaker 1: symptoms themselves. A second theory is that the immune system's
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Speaker 1: efforts to combat a lingering COVID infection lead to immunological dysregulation,
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Speaker 1: triggering neuroinflammation and other effects sometimes referred to as a
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Speaker 1: sickness behavior. This can leave sufferers feeling perpetually ill, as
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Speaker 1: the body's sickness response washes over them in a broken cycle.
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Speaker 1: A third is the notion that the infection disrupts cellular mitochondria,
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Speaker 1: inhibiting their critical role in converting food to energy and
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Speaker 1: powering the cells they inhabit. Finally, there's a hypothesis that
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Speaker 1: the virus will sometimes burrow into tissues in different parts
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Speaker 1: of the body, creating viral reservoirs that evade the immune
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Speaker 1: system and trigger a cascade of adverse physiological responses. Much
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Speaker 1: of the field has converged on this hypothesis to explain
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Speaker 1: at least some of the pathology of long COVID, in
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Speaker 1: part because early research found compelling evidence of viral persistence
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Speaker 1: in the gut. Moreover, as Peluso explained to me, viral
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Speaker 1: persistence offers the simplest, most straightforward hypothesis. A pathogen invades,
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Speaker 1: sticks around, and causes trouble. This is the area Peluso
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Speaker 1: and his link colleagues are now most focused on. Perhaps surprisingly,
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Speaker 1: Peluso was initially skeptical that viral persistence could be a
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Speaker 1: key characteristic of long COVID. We are really trained to
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Speaker 1: conceive of most pathogens as transient, especially RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2,
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Speaker 1: he told me. But when Peluso and his colleagues began
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Speaker 1: analyzing tissue from link participants, they were stunned to find
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Speaker 1: the virus's RNA in the tissue of people with long
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Speaker 1: COVID who were months or even years past their initial infection.
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Speaker 1: It was only when we started to see it in
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Speaker 1: our own program that I began to realize that the
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Speaker 1: truth might be more complicated than what the textbook said,
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Speaker 1: he recalled. When you're looking at that slide in front
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Speaker 1: of you, it's quite remarkable. After meeting with Peluso, I
21:33
Speaker 1: went to see some of the program's research in action
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Speaker 1: in Henrik's virology laboratory, one floor below Link's operations in
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Speaker 1: Pride Hall. Together with a separate dedicated repository at UCSF,
21:47
Speaker 1: the lab makes up one of the largest banks of
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Speaker 1: long COVID biospecimens in the country, and this is where
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Speaker 1: Henrik and his colleagues analyze tissue, fluid, and other samples
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Speaker 1: to identify latent SARS-CoV-2 virus and piece together what ill
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Speaker 1: effects those viral reservoirs may cause. The biobank also operates
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Speaker 1: as a kind of massive lending library. LINC staff correspond
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Speaker 1: with researchers all over the world and send out samples
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Speaker 1: to sustain other studies and experimentation. Among other researchers, the
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Speaker 1: lab has lent specimens to Yale University's Akiko Iwasaki, who
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Speaker 1: is investigating long COVID autoimmunity, and potential tissue damage stemming
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Speaker 1: from infection. The University of Pennsylvania's Michaela Lachi, whose team
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Speaker 1: is examining whether SARS-CoV-2 could be altering the immune response
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Speaker 1: in lymphoid tissue, and Irini Saridi, a scientist at the
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Speaker 1: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who focuses on
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Speaker 1: the specific immunological dysfunctions triggered by SARS-CoV-2, including in T-cells.
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Speaker 1: Although Peluso and his UCSF colleagues focus primarily on viral persistence,
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Speaker 1: Pelosi believes the field will need to think much broader,
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Speaker 1: not only because I don't think that viral persistence is
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Speaker 1: an answer, but because it may not be the only
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Speaker 1: answer or the answer for everyone. Stepping into a large
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Speaker 1: white antechamber, Henrik and I donned paper gowns, booties, safety glasses,
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Speaker 1: and two layers of gloves. Finally, we dropped our phones
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Speaker 1: into zip-top bags. Don't touch anything, Henrik warned, his arms
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Speaker 1: splayed out and his palms facing up to emphasize the risk.
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Speaker 1: That morning, a link participant had undergone a lumbar puncture,
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Speaker 1: with clinicians using a long, hollow needle to extract a
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Speaker 1: sample of cerebrospinal fluid. Researchers were now transporting that fluid
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Speaker 1: to the lab, a large room with high ceilings and long,
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Speaker 1: narrow rows of benches, each affixed to shelves cluttered with vials, pipettes,
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Speaker 1: and biohazard containers. The lab has processed tens of thousands
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Speaker 1: of long COVID tissue specimens drawn from all over the
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Speaker 1: human body, including the gut, lymph nodes, bone marrow, and
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Speaker 1: the spinal cord. Thus far, Peluso, Henrik, and their colleagues
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Speaker 1: at UCSF have found viral reservoirs only in the gut
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Speaker 1: and bone marrow. Once the cerebrospinal fluid was delivered, A tall,
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Speaker 1: broad-shouldered researcher named Emmanuel Valaquez sat down in front of
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Speaker 1: a large metal workspace called a biosafety cabinet to begin
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Speaker 1: processing it. I know the protocol like the back of
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Speaker 1: my hand, he said. Wearing latex gloves, Valaquez pulled the
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Speaker 1: sample out of a foam container filled with ice and
24:44
Speaker 1: transferred the fluid into a second tube. He then carried
24:48
Speaker 1: it across the room to a centrifuge, where he would
24:51
Speaker 1: spin down the sample to remove unwanted proteins, collagen, and
24:55
Speaker 1: other biological material that could interfere with the cells. While
25:00
Speaker 1: the centrifuge whirred quietly, Henrik explained how the link researchers
25:05
Speaker 1: analyzed these purified samples to identify signatures of viral persistence, including,
25:10
Speaker 1: for example, telltale antibodies, proteins, or RNA. Like physical evidence
25:17
Speaker 1: at a crime scene, These signatures will hopefully shed light
25:21
Speaker 1: on the sequence of events they believe viral persistence may trigger. Inflammation, clotting,
25:27
Speaker 1: neural injury, or other harmful physiological responses. Of course, if
25:32
Speaker 1: viral persistence is shown to cause long COVID, it may
25:36
Speaker 1: represent just the first link in a longer chain reaction.
25:40
Speaker 1: It's possible, even likely, that one or more of the
25:43
Speaker 1: other explanations for long COVID's pathology is also part of
25:47
Speaker 1: that chain. viral persistence leading to immune dysfunction, for example,
25:52
Speaker 1: which then prompts inflammation or interferes with mitochondria and causes
25:57
Speaker 1: cellular damage. As Peluso put it to me, if viral
26:01
Speaker 1: persistence is the most upstream mechanism, how does it trigger
26:05
Speaker 1: all of these downstream mechanisms that are thought to contribute
26:08
Speaker 1: to long COVID? The centrifuge started gently beeping, signaling that
26:13
Speaker 1: it was finished spinning down the cells. Velazquez pulled open
26:17
Speaker 1: the machine, took out the sample, and carried it back
26:20
Speaker 1: to the safety cabinet. There, he used a pipette to
26:23
Speaker 1: distribute the specimen into 20 separate vials, squeezing individual droplets
26:29
Speaker 1: of isolated cells into clear plastic containers. Although routine, transferring
26:35
Speaker 1: specimens requires intense focus and a steady hand. Do you
26:39
Speaker 1: remember the game Operation, where you try to pick things
26:42
Speaker 1: out without hitting the side, Henrik joked? Velazquez squeezed exactly
26:48
Speaker 1: one milliliter of the sample into each vial. The specimens
26:52
Speaker 1: are separated so that Link can offer them to other labs.
26:56
Speaker 1: By dividing the samples, Peluso had told me, the lab
26:59
Speaker 1: is able to provide different researchers with the biological material
27:03
Speaker 1: necessary to pursue specific research niches within the larger long
27:08
Speaker 1: COVID field. Over time, Peluso said, this could help yield
27:13
Speaker 1: a broader set of therapeutic approaches that could be tested
27:16
Speaker 1: beyond just targeting the virus. Finally, Velazquez loaded the samples
27:23
Speaker 1: into a plastic orange rack and transferred them into an
27:26
Speaker 1: industrial freezer where they fit snugly next to stacks of
27:29
Speaker 1: white boxes blanketed in frost that stored additional link samples.
27:34
Speaker 1: Once the temperature gets low enough, lab members transport the
27:38
Speaker 1: samples into a liquid nitrogen tank that maintains the temperatures
27:42
Speaker 1: of around minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, cryogenically freezing them, and
27:48
Speaker 1: allowing Henrik and his colleagues to keep the cells, and
27:51
Speaker 1: the complex biological records concealed within them, alive and ready
27:57
Speaker 1: for further experimentation. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine
28:03
Speaker 1: for today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you
28:07
Speaker 1: for listening, and have a great day.