Alan C Seifert
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Neuroscience
More than half of people infected with COVID-19 keep having symptoms long after the infection clears. When those symptoms involve the nervous system, such as brain fog, memory problems, fatigue, headache, dizziness, sleep and mood problems, or changes in smell and taste, the condition is called neuroPASC (neurological post-acute sequelae of COVID-19).
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
long COVID
post-acute sequelae of COVID-19
neuroPASC
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2029
What they work on
- 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.
- Identify additional spatial patterns of brain and brainstem abnormalities in neuroPASC using data-driven analyses of high-resolution, multi-contrast ex vivo MRI and image-guided histology.
- Image 60 neuroPASC patients at two time points and 60 controls on a 7 Tesla MRI scanner, combined with cognitive testing and blood inflammatory markers, to see whether symptom recovery tracks resolution of imaging findings.
More about the research
Doctors still do not know how the virus damages the brain to cause these symptoms. This project uses brain imaging and tissue studies to find out.
Why it matters
People with neuroPASC have few treatment options because the cause of their brain symptoms is unclear. Identifying how SARS-CoV-2 injures brain tissue could point to targeted treatments. Clinically usable MRI protocols and imaging biomarkers could also help doctors track the disease and test whether new treatments work.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
Negar Omidvari
University of California-Davis, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Develop and validate a kinetic model of the T-cell–targeting tracer 18F-AraG across organs and tissue types, using dynamic total-body PET scans for more accurate measurement than standard static images.
Bryan Lau
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Public Health & Epidemiology
Assess how HIV status relates to COVID-19 hospitalization and post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (lasting after-effects), using Medicaid claims from 27 states and Washington, DC.
The school
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: 45 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 62 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.