tick-borne disease Archives - Page 4 of 10

A Broader Definition of Health Through Ancestral Learning, Diet and Better Understanding of the Human Body

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this podcast episode, host Lia Gaertner interviews Chris Kresser, a renowned expert in functional medicine and ancestral health. Kresser shares his personal health journey, which involved struggling with chronic illness and eventually finding his way to functional medicine. He discusses the importance of zooming in and zooming out in managing chronic illness, as well as the broader definition of health as human flourishing. Kresser also talks about his approach to diet, which involves giving himself permission to eat a variety of foods while prioritizing those that make him feel good. He emphasizes the importance of the ecosystem in managing chronic illness, focusing on factors such as gut health, lifestyle, stress management, and finding joy and fulfillment in life. Kresser concludes by offering advice to individuals with Lyme disease and chronic illness, highlighting the significance of addressing the entire ecosystem rather than solely focusing on the pathogen.

Lia Gaertner: Welcome to the Ticktective podcast and video series, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, where our mission is to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure. I’m your host, Lia Gaertner, director of Education and outreach. Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the USA and is a global issue. This show includes interviews with the researchers we fund, as well as other interesting people in the Lyme scientific community. We are a nonprofit foundation based in Silicon Valley. Thanks to a generous grant that covers all of our overhead, 100% of all donations go directly to support, research and prevention programs. You can find out more or donate@bayarealyme.org.

Lia Gaertner: Thank you, Chris Kresser, for joining me on the Ticktective™ video and podcast series.

Chris Kresser: Thanks for having me, Lia. It’s a pleasure.

Lia Gaertner: Chris Kresser is a renowned expert leading clinician and top educator in the fields of functional medicine and ancestral health. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Paleo Cure, as well as the book Unconventional Medicine. Chris is the co-founder and educational director of the California Center for Functional Medicine and the founder of the Kresser Institute. Chris regularly shares his evidence-based insights from trusted sources and world-renowned health practitioners and coaches through his blogs, webcast interviews, and his own podcast, Revolution Health Radio. So, Chris, during your decade-long struggle with chronic illness, you learned firsthand where healthcare mattered most and where it came up short. After seeking the help of more than 30 healthcare practitioners and ultimately having to learn and implement behavior changes on your own with limited support, you emerged with your health and a vision and drive for changing and improving the practice and education of functional medicine. Can you please tell us about your health journey?

Chris Kresser: I’ll be brief because it was long and arduous, but I took off to travel around the world for a couple of years in my early twenties, and I was doing a lot of surfing. I was in a little village on Sumbawa, which is an island in Indonesia, and a bunch of the people there who were surfing at that break got exposed to a waterborne pathogen, actually several pathogens. There was a stagnant pool of water near the river mouth there, and locals dug a trench to drain that pool into the river mouth. And all of that water where cows had been defecating went out into the surf break, which are often located right at the river mouth. And unbeknownst to a lot of us who were there surfing, we were exposed to it and I would say 70-80% of the people there got quite sick.

I took some antibiotics that I had in my medical kit and the acute phase of it passed relatively quickly. But as I continued to travel after that, I went to the Maldives and was there for a few months and I was in South Africa and Reunion Island, Mauritius, and Madagascar. After about six, seven months, I started feeling really sick and it became clear to me that it wasn’t something that was just temporary that was going to go away. So, I made my way back to Australia and that was where I started to seek medical care. And then when I didn’t make much progress, I decided to go back home to the US and although most of the doctors and other practitioners I saw meant very well and did their best to help me, it was pretty clear that the medical system was not set up to deal with those kinds of problems.

Infectious Minds: Unraveling the Link Between Infections & Psychiatric Disorders

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this interview, psychiatrist Dr. Robert Bransfield explains the links between neuropsychiatric disorders and infections. He recounts his successes treating patients who repeatedly fail to respond to conventional interventions. Dr. Bransfield describes how clinical diagnoses of infection, along with correct administration and interpretation of testing, plus treating patients with antibiotics can, in many cases, lead to an abatement of a variety of psychiatric disorders, from psychosis to depression and anxiety. He also explores the connection between tick-borne diseases in maternal-fetal transfer of infections and the rise in autism in children.

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity. Bibliography and references are posted below.

“What are people in the future going to say about the Lyme crisis? I’m sure this will be judged by history as a great failure of our healthcare system, that we didn’t move quickly enough with this, and that people were holding back progress.”

—Dr. Robert Bransfield

Dana Parish: Hi, I am Dana Parish, and I am hosting the Ticktective podcast on behalf of Bay Area Lyme Foundation. I am here today with a wonderful psychiatrist, Dr. Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLF APA. He is a graduate of Rutgers College and George Washington University School of Medicine. He completed his psychiatric residency training at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital. He’s board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in psychiatry and is a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He’s a clinical associate professor of Psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, and he is well published in the peer reviewed literature. Welcome Dr. Bransfield. Thank you so much for talking to me today. How are you?

Robert Bransfield: Thank you for inviting me.

Dana Parish: It’s my pleasure. I’ve learned so much from you over the years about microbes and mental illness. You’ve blown my mind a million times and I cannot wait to share your knowledge today with everybody who’s going to watch and listen to this podcast. So, my first question is, does psychiatry pay enough attention and does medicine pay enough attention to microbes in infections and pathogens in mental illness? And if not, what is going on with the brain when we get neurologic infections?

Robert Bransfield: Well, not enough. If you look at the old views of what caused psychiatric issues, it was thought to be demonic possession. Then we blamed our mothers, and then we blamed serotonin. It doesn’t quite make sense (to people) that there’s something that causes psychiatric illness. But these illnesses don’t just come out of nowhere.

The problem is that nothing in the known universe for its size is more complex than the human brain. So, understanding the pathophysiology of the human brain is very challenging, especially the part involving psychiatric illness. That is much more complicated than general neurological illness where the circuits are not as complex as the circuits that impact psychiatric functioning. So, this causes a problem. When we look at all the possibilities, there are many things that contribute to mental illness—microbes are just one of them. But I think they are a very significant one and when you look long and hard enough, this does explain many psychiatric illnesses.

Foundational Work Scores Results

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL 10-year Anniversary Series

10 Years of Collaboration Bringing Hope: How Dr. John Aucott’s Relationship with Bay Area Lyme Helped Get Groundbreaking Biobanks Launched to Fuel the Research Engine of Lyme Disease Investigations

In this blog, part of our 10-year anniversary blog series, we talk with John Aucott, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Director of the Lyme Disease Research Center, about his work and how his investigations are helping us understand persistent/chronic Lyme infections. A long-term collaborator and grant recipient of Bay Area Lyme Foundation, Dr. Aucott reflects on his history with our organization, the ongoing plight of Lyme disease patients, and the slow growth in government funding for investigations into the disease. He talks about the early days of identifying the need for well-characterized samples from Lyme patients and his role in helping launch biobank programs, including his own SLICE Study Biorepository and BAL’s Lyme Disease Biobank.

Bay Area Lyme: I want to take you right back to the very beginning of your relationship with Bay Area Lyme (BAL), the founding of your SLICE study and our Lyme Disease Biobank (LDB) and talk about everything that was happening 10 years ago. People talk about the “norming, storming and forming” stages of organizations, and there was an awful lot of activity going on 10 years ago in the world of Lyme disease. And so, please share your thoughts on what was happening around that time, your part in it, and how you came into the picture with BAL and our biobank.

SLICE Studies — The Study of Lyme disease Immunology and Clinical Events (SLICE), Johns Hopkins University Lyme Disease Research Center

John Aucott: My first memory is that I flew out to California and my agenda at that time was getting people interested in research. There was very little funding for Lyme disease research, and to some extent there still isn’t a great amount of funding for Lyme disease, especially the kind of research I do, which is clinical translational research. I’m an MD, so my research involves bridging basic science to human beings to patients. So, to be very candid about it, I was interested in getting BAL interested in my work. I pitched what we were doing. We had already set up the Johns Hopkins SLICE study, the Study of Lyme disease Immunology and Clinical Events. And at that point it was one of only two large scale biobanks collecting for Lyme disease. The other one is Dr. Gary Wormser’s, who still has a biobank in Valhalla, New York.

So, I was pitching the idea of a Lyme disease biobank to BAL, and this was a whole new concept. A biobank is a hard concept to sell initially because people don’t understand that setting up a biobank is like being Levi Strauss: It’s selling the Levis and the picks, and the shovels—not selling them the actual gold in your pocket. And it’s a hard pitch because people don’t understand that somebody has to supply the foundational work so that other people can mine for the gold. But BAL caught on to the idea that the biobank that we had at Hopkins was a crucial resource that would enable collaboration with other researchers to advance the scientific understanding of disease mechanisms and potentially identify and validate biomarkers for improving diagnostics and treatments.

LymeAid 2013 — LymeAid 2014 Scientific Panel (from left): Wendy Adams, John Aucott, MD, Carin Rollins, and Bill Robinson, MD, PhD

Bay Area Lyme bought into the importance of this idea. The first thing that happened was you asked me to be on the BAL Scientific Advisory Board soon thereafter. BAL expressed support for the SLICE study’s biobank at Hopkins and you actually gave us one of our first grants to help support our biobank work. So, that was the first thing that happened. We applied for a grant, and we got a grant from BAL to help us because we had not yet gotten federal funding for it. So, that was one of the first grants to support it, and now in 2023 we are finally receiving our first NIH funding.

How to Diagnose if Lyme Disease is Affecting the Heart and How to Best Treat It

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

Dr. Adrian Baranchuk, Professor of Medicine at Queen’s University in the Division of Cardiology in Ontario, Canada discusses his screening process for identifying Lyme infections in the heart and how to treat these patients without unnecessary pacemakers. He has published research and spoken on the topic of Lyme carditis at numerous conferences. He is passionate in his efforts to educate doctors on diagnosing Lyme-related AV heart block. Dr. Baranchuk joined Bay Area Lyme Advisor Lia Gaertner to discuss the cardiological manifestations of Lyme disease, Lyme Carditis and specific cases that illustrate his approach.

Lia Gaertner: Welcome to the Ticktective podcast and video series, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, where our mission is to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure. I’m your host, Lia Gaertner. Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the USA and is a global issue. This podcast includes interviews with the researchers we fund, as well as other interesting people in the Lyme scientific community. We are a nonprofit foundation based in Silicon Valley. Thanks to a generous grant that covers all of our overhead, 100% of all donations go directly to support research and prevention programs. You can find out more or donate@bayarealyme.org. Thank you for joining the Ticktective video and podcast series, Dr. Baranchuk

Adrian Baranchuk: Thank you very much for having me.

Lia Gaertner: Dr. Baranchuk, a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, completed his training in internal medicine in cardiology, along with clinical fellowship in cardiac electrophysiology. Dr. Baranchuk is a tenured professor of medicine at Queen’s University in the division of cardiology in Ontario, Canada. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Electrocardiology, as well as a member of numerous editorial boards and a reviewer for several medical journals. Dr. Baranchuk has authored eight books and published more than 700 articles in prestigious international journals, as well as 54 book chapters, and he’s presented more than 270 abstracts around the world. He is the vice president of the International Society of Halter and Non-Invasive Electrocardiology, and the Secretary of the Inter-American Society of Cardiology. He’s also the past president of the International Society of Electrocardiology. He’s been elected as a member of the Electrophysiology Leadership section of the American College of Cardiology, and is the recipient of several teaching awards as well as being voted one of the 10 most influential Hispanics in Canada.

Adrian Baranchuk: Thank you very much for the invitation. I am so pleased to be here with you today.

Lia Gaertner: I’d like to start with a case study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ). It reads:

“A fatal case of Lyme disease in a previously healthy 37-year-old man illustrates the challenges of diagnosing Lyme disease in the absence of classic symptoms. The patient originally presented to his family doctor with flu-like symptoms, including fever, sore throat, nasal congestion, and migratory joint pain. Several weeks earlier, he had been in contact with ticks but didn’t recall removing one. His physician suspected a viral infection and the patient’s symptoms resolved. However, weeks later, he developed heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and chest discomfort for which he was sent to the emergency department. Lyme disease was suspected as the ECG showed complete heart block. He was admitted to the hospital and started treatment for Lyme carditis. But his condition unfortunately worsened quickly. Clinicians were unable to reverse the course of his illness, and he died. Serology results confirmed Lyme disease and an autopsy showed Lyme carditis.”

The Long and Winding Road: The Story of Bay Area Lyme’s Multi-Year Quest to Identify Treatments for Lyme Patients

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Leading the Way Series

“The opening of a network of Lyme disease clinics is the culmination of many years of tireless work and the vision of a small group of determined women over 10 years ago. We are extremely optimistic that the Lyme Clinical Trials Network will accelerate the development of new treatments for patients with post-treatment and persistent Lyme disease.”

—Linda Giampa, Executive Director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation

When Bay Area Lyme Foundation (BAL) was formed a decade ago, its mission was clear: to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure. “And that’s still our goal,” emphasizes BAL co-founder Bonnie Crater, as she reflects on the last 10 years. However, appreciating the magnitude of the Foundation’s audacious mission requires an understanding of two complex—yet inextricably linked—medical domains: the world of diagnostics, and the world of therapeutics.

Bay Area Lyme Co-Founder Bonnie Crater

The ‘Holy Grail’ for Lyme disease is an accurate diagnostic test—or better yet a suite of specifically designed tests for the different stages of acute and persistent Lyme disease. Although great strides are being made in understanding the infection and the disease’s progression, the ‘silver bullet’ of accurate diagnostic tests continues to elude us. The current diagnostics for acute Lyme (a two-step process with an ELISA either followed by a Western blot or another ELISA) are fraught with problems. These tests may miss up to 70% of acute Lyme cases or deliver false negative results. They are unreliable for detecting acute Lyme and are ineffective indicators for anyone with a persistent/chronic tick-borne infection. (Watch or listen to our Ticktective with Brandon Jutras, PhD, to learn why the current direct detection tests for Lyme are so inaccurate.)

Add to this the fact that FDA-approved therapeutics—or ‘cures’—have not evolved much in 10 years either and foment controversy. A quick internet search on ‘How to treat Lyme disease’ will offer information from the IDSA (Infectious Diseases Society of America) stating that a 10-14-day course of oral antibiotics, such as amoxicillin or doxycycline, will do the job for someone with an EM (Erythema migrans) rash who has early/acute Lyme. But anyone who has had Lyme disease, been treated, and then experienced a continuation of symptoms knows that this recommended course of intervention often fails to clear the infection, leaving some persistent Lyme patients in limbo, and health care providers without an approved treatment protocol. Simply put, this is the continuing underlying treacherous terrain of Lyme, throwing up challenges in both diagnostics and therapeutics.

On the Front Lines of Lyme Treatment: A Conversation with Pioneer Kenneth Liegner, MD

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this conversation between Ticktective™ host Dana Parish and pioneering physician Kenneth Liegner, MD, the discussion focuses on how Dr. Liegner, frustrated and perplexed by the lack of options for persistent/chronic Lyme, came to prescribe disulfiram—a drug intended to treat alcoholics—as an off-label therapeutic for his Lyme patients. He recounts what happened next, and reflects on the impact of his bold experiment, plus they touch on how a Covid infection may impact Lyme patients, causing a resurgence of latent symptoms. They also explore the history of tick-borne diseases and the lack of recognition among clinicians, the government, and insurance companies for these insidious infections that cause chronic suffering for many. Note: This transcribed podcast has been edited for clarity.

Dana Parish: Welcome to the Ticktective Podcast, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, where our mission is to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose, and simple to cure. I’m your guest host today, Dana Parish. I’m the co-author of the book Chronic, and I’m on the advisory board of Bay Area Lyme Foundation. This program offers insightful interviews with clinicians, scientists, patients, and other interesting people. We’re a non-profit foundation based in Silicon Valley, and thanks to a generous grant that covers a hundred percent of our overhead, all of your donations go directly to our research and our prevention programs. For more information about Lyme disease, please visit us at bayarealyme.org.

Dana Parish: I’m so thrilled to be guest hosting Ticktective for you today on behalf of Bay Area Lyme Foundation. I’m here with a dear friend and a brilliant Lyme physician, internist, author, Dr. Kenneth Liegner. Dr. Kenneth Liegner is a board-certified internist with additional training in pathology and critical care medicine, practicing in Pawling, New York. He’s the author of an extraordinary documentarian history of Lyme called In the Crucible of Chronic Lyme Disease, Collected Writings and Associated Materials. We’ll talk about that more later. Dr. Liegner is also the first to apply disulfiram in the treatment of Lyme, and he published his experience in the peer-reviewed journal Antibiotics. Thank you so much for being here with me today, Dr. Liegner.

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Celebrates Department of Defense CDMRP Tick-borne Disease Awardees

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Celebrates Department of Defense CDMRP Tick-borne Disease Awardees

Projects of three awardees to be enabled by Lyme Disease Biobank samples

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., March 23, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, announces that two projects it has previously funded have now received Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) Tick-Borne Disease awards. Three of the six recently announced CDMRP awardees will be using biological samples from Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Lyme Disease Biobank to enable their research into diagnostics and therapeutics for tick-borne diseases, including Lyme disease—which infects half a million people each year.

“Government awards like CDMRP help propel much needed research on tick-borne illnesses forward, and, with three diagnostics projects using Biobank samples, we are honored to play a part in making this important research possible,” said Liz Horn, PhD, MBI, Principal Investigator, Lyme Disease Biobank, which provides researchers with access to reliable biological samples to enable research toward better diagnostics and treatments for these complex diseases. “If researchers don’t have access to well-characterized blood samples with robust testing and medical information, they can’t build the necessary research programs to develop better diagnostics, which are urgently needed for these complex diseases,” added Dr. Horn.

ALL ABOUT KIDS WITH LYME, PANS, MOLD ILLNESS

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this conversation between Ticktective™ host Dana Parish and Harvard-trained pediatric infectious diseases specialist Charlotte Mao, MD, the discussion focuses on how Dr. Mao gradually moved away from the narrow view of Lyme disease and began to champion understanding and therapeutics for children suffering from persistent Lyme. They explore tick-borne diseases and their connection to other chronic illnesses that are often misunderstood and misdiagnosed by conventional medicine. Note: This transcribed podcast has been edited for clarity.

Dana Parish: Hi I’m so excited to guest host the Ticktective podcast today. I want to introduce you to a very dear friend of mine, one of the most brilliant, curious, interesting, funny, and dearest people. Please welcome Dr. Charlotte Mao. She is a pediatric infectious diseases physician with a special focus on Lyme disease and associated infections. She received her medical degree at Harvard Medical School and did her pediatric and infectious diseases training at Boston Children’s Hospital. The first 25 years of her career were focused primarily on pediatric HIV clinical care and clinical research, serving as a site co-investigator for numerous NIH funded multi-center pediatric HIV clinical trials at Boston Children’s Hospital. She turned her focus to Lyme and associated diseases after gaining extensive clinical experience with pediatric Lyme patients in Boston children’s hospital’s referring ID clinic. Then she joined the Pediatric Infectious Disease Department at Mass General Hospital and Spaulding Rehab Hospital Dean Center for Tick-borne Illness, where she was the pediatric IG specialist in a multidisciplinary clinic for children with complex Lyme disease. She is currently curriculum director for Invisible International. She most recently served on a tick-borne disease working group subcommittee for prevention and treatment and co-organized a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Banbury Conference on perinatal transmission of Lyme Disease. She’s also on the Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Science Committee. Welcome, Charlotte. It’s so great to see you!

One Lyme Patient’s Challenging Quest to Donate Her Body to Science in Her Final Days

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Spotlight Series

In Puerto Rico, Donating Your Body to Science is Almost Impossible

Luisette Mauras Rodriguez working in the lab at Cornell — Working in the lab at Cornell in 1997

Luisette Mauras Rodriguez is lying in bed at home in Guyana, Puerto Rico, waiting to die. She’s 46 years old, her body ravaged by Lyme, numerous tick-borne coinfections, and a multitude of other hits caused by environmental exposure to toxins like black mold, fungus, mycoplasma, and chikungunya virus. Family members do not understand her illness and laugh at her ‘exaggerations.’ Her husband left her because he fears getting sick and his religious convictions cause him to question the validity of her condition. Her mother, formerly a registered nurse, has abandoned her to her fate. Whenever Luisette gets desperate for help and goes to the ER, they refer her to the psych ward saying her illness is fabricated.

Cornell University and the surrounding woods where she was bitten

A former professional lab technician who worked in pharmaceutical development with US companies like Wyeth, SmithKline Beecham, and IPR Pharmaceuticals, Luisette has one dying wish: to donate her body to the Lyme Disease Biobank (LDB) so that samples from her brain, joints, organs, and tissues will be used to fuel much-needed research into Lyme and tick-borne diseases. She has registered with the National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) in Philadelphia to have her body collected after her death, but as of writing this article, staff there are unable to find any medical professional on the island willing to partner with them to ensure this happens.

“We have been unsuccessful in securing anyone for recovery for the donor located in Puerto Rico. It has been very difficult getting anyone to follow up with us on top of the language barrier. We were trying to give the pathology department at the University time to get back to us but they seem to be very busy. The complexity of the recovery also makes it more difficult as well.” — Wauchita Green, Manager, Organ & Tissue Source Sites, NDRI, The National Disease Research Interchange

From Long Covid to Long Lyme: Persistent Infections Drive Chronic Illness

Ticktective interview with Dana Parish and Amy Proal, PhD

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this insightful conversation between Ticktective™ guest host Dana Parish and microbiologist Amy Proal, PhD, we investigate persistent pathogens, how they remain in the body after treatment often leading to chronic illness, and how they can be reactivated by new infections, including Covid-19. Note: This transcribed podcast has been edited for clarity.

Dana Parish: Welcome to the Ticktective Podcast, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, where our mission is to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure. I’m your guest host today, Dana Parish. I’m the co-author of the book Chronic, and I’m on the advisory board of Bay Area Lyme Foundation. This program offers insightful interviews with clinicians, scientists, patients, and other interesting people. We’re a nonprofit foundation based in Silicon Valley, and thanks to a generous grant that covers a hundred percent of our overhead, all your donations go directly to our research and our prevention programs. For more information about Lyme disease, please visit us at www.bayarealyme.org.

Today, on behalf of Bay Area Lyme Foundation, I am here with brilliant microbiologist Dr. Amy Proal. I have a little bio for her. I’m going to read right now. Dr. Proal serves as president and CEO of PolyBio Research Foundation, and she’s the chief scientific officer of the Long Covid Research Initiative, LCRI. She went to Georgetown, she has a PhD in microbiology from Murdoch University in Australia, and she is a rockstar in the field and a leader in the field of persistent pathogens. She has just come off of a huge press tour for her incredible work and the enormous grant that she just received for her Long Covid research, and I’m so excited to be one of the first people to talk to you after all this.

Amy Proal, PhD: Of course, Dana, thanks so much for having me. That was an amazing intro. I appreciate all of that. It’s great to be interviewed by you. It’s mostly just a friendly conversation, which is fun.

Dana Parish: So, congratulations on your grant. I found out about it all coming together because I saw it in Forbes and then in the LA Times, and then I saw it in the Financial Times and I was like, “Oh my God. This is front page news!” Can you talk a little bit about the work you’re doing in Long Covid?