Second-year postdoctoral scholar Christian Mouchati, MD, presented an abstract poster at the Conferences of Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in February.
“The work highlights the increase in inflammatory markers and gut integrity in post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC),” said Mouchati. “The presentation was met with enthusiasm and is now under peer review.”
“By linking oxidative lipids and gut dysfunction to long COVID, our study is opening up lots of potential therapeutic trials targeting these pathways,” said Mouchati’s mentor, School of Medicine Professor Grace McComsey, MD.
According to a December 2022 Clinical Infectious Diseases article, approximately 19 million people in the U.S. are living with long COVID and two million of them have disabling symptoms.
Mouchati is looking forward to upcoming projects and clinical trials on alleviating long COVID complications and a comprehensive study on the effect of the virus on the nervous system. In his role, he collaborates with University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center to work on early detection, prevention and treatment of metabolic complications related to COVID-19 and HIV.
“I help support multiple ongoing observational studies and clinical trials, notably a multicentric national observational study—“Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery” or RECOVER, a National Institutes of Health research initiative that seeks to understand and prevent long COVID, ” said Mouchati.
Mouchati, who graduated in 2021 from the Lebanese University Faculty of Medical Sciences in Beirut, is grateful for his postdoctoral fellowship for enriching his education and preparing him for medical residency in the next match cycle.