Xiaohong Lu
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport, LA·Neuroscience
Millions of people who recovered from COVID-19 still report loss of smell, brain fog and memory problems months or years later, long after the body's general inflammation has subsided. Something is keeping the brain damaged.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Microbiology & Immunology
Pharmacology
- Topics
long COVID
SARS-CoV-2
alpha-synuclein
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2030
What they work on
- Determine whether SARS-CoV-2 infection drives chronic loss of smell and cognitive deficits in humanized ACE2 transgenic mice, in a model that produces lasting brain pathology without the virus invading the brain.
- Test whether viral infection triggers Lewy pathology — clumps of α-synuclein protein inside neurons — in aging mice, and whether genotoxic stress from DNA damage appears early as an initiating feature.
- Establish whether brain genotoxic stress is causal by inhibiting ATM, the kinase that senses DNA damage, selectively in stressed cells using a genetic strategy, and measuring effects on α-synuclein spreading and memory.
- Dissect how DNA damage response, cellular senescence, autophagy and lysosome acidification defects, and neuroinflammation link infection to sustained neurological deficits in post-acute sequelae of COVID-19.
More about the research
This project tests the idea that a viral infection leaves behind DNA damage in brain cells — genotoxic stress — and that this stress sets off a chain of events producing the same kind of protein clumping seen in dementia.
Why it matters
Long COVID leaves large numbers of recovered patients with persistent loss of smell, neurological symptoms and cognitive decline, and there are no treatments aimed at the underlying cause. If DNA damage stress in the brain turns out to drive both these symptoms and α-synuclein pathology, drugs targeting that stress response could become candidate therapies for long COVID and potentially for dementia with Lewy bodies.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alan C Seifert
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether neuroPASC, lasting neurological symptoms after COVID-19, involves vascular injury and inflammation, by comparing ex vivo MRI and histology from half-brains of 25 neuroPASC and 15 control decedents.
Thomas M Wisniewski
New York University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Compare cognitive and neuropsychological performance yearly over five years among older adults with post-COVID cognitive symptoms, infected adults without symptoms and uninfected controls, using the CDR-SB and Uniform Data Set Version 3.
The school
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport: 6 labs on PI Pages, $32M a year on research, 9 research doctorates a year.
More about Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport
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