Claus investigates COVID-19's long-term effects

Claus Desler is an associate professor here at the Department of Biomedical Sciences, where he leads his research group, Desler Group. Claus has long been interested in the bodily processes underlying aging and the diseases that often develop as we age.

You may also recognize Claus from the media, where he is frequently consulted as an expert on aging and age-related diseases, most recently in connection with the longevity trend.

Desler Group leads the EU Horizon project POINT (Preventing Non-communicable Diseases Caused by the Post-acute Phase of COVID-19 Infection), which we will explore further here. The project has been allocated nine million euros and aims to understand and explain the relationship between the post-acute phase (PAP) of COVID-19 and the risk of developing chronic diseases.

When the fever is gone, and you're not sneezing and coughing much anymore

The phrase above has long been the benchmark for when it's safe to return to work after being infected with a virus like the flu or corona. While this rule of thumb is generally okay for determining when you're no longer contagious, it doesn't necessarily mean that the body is completely recovered. Claus elaborates:

"Infectious diseases like COVID-19 can have effects on the body that we don't yet fully understand. For example, studies during the coronavirus pandemic showed that up to 70% of those infected experienced reduced organ function in the months and years following their illness. This is usually not problematic for younger and healthy individuals, as their organs recover without much notice—perhaps they feel a bit tired, but it's usually manageable. However, an infection like COVID-19 can have serious, long-term consequences for older individuals and those with pre-existing reduced organ function."

The coronavirus pandemic, though tragic and unpleasant, has opened up a wealth of opportunities for researchers who want to learn more about how infectious diseases can affect the body's immune system and the risk of developing other diseases afterwards.

"Normally, it is very difficult to study the long-term effects of infectious diseases on large groups of people because we test very little for diseases like the flu, and almost all adults have developed immunity over time, making it extremely difficult to reach definitive conclusions. The coronavirus pandemic provided some unique research opportunities. None of us were immune to the virus, we were all infected within a relatively short time frame, and extensive testing was conducted, so we know with great certainty when people were infected.

For many, myself included, it was a challenging time that we would have preferred not to have experienced, but from a research perspective, it opened some fantastic doors, allowing us to use all that data as a basis for a range of interesting studies on how infectious diseases like COVID-19 can 'open the door' for the development of non-communicable and chronic diseases."

This is precisely the purpose of the POINT project, which uses Danish and Estonian patient registers to examine citizens' health status and look for patterns in the development of heart, lung, and kidney diseases in relation to when they were infected with COVID-19. Together with blood samples taken from COVID-19 patients immediately after the acute illness phase and in the following years, provided by Greek research partners and Hvidovre Hospital, it can provide valuable insights into whether and how COVID-19 affects our organs in the long term.

"We really want to learn more about the mechanisms at play, and we are keen to identify relevant biomarkers—such as proteins and antibodies—that can indicate what exactly is happening in the body when these organ damages occur. COVID-19 might make the immune system hypersensitive, but it's unlikely to be just one process, and it could vary from person to person."

Once the researchers have identified these biomarkers, the next step is to construct virtual and physical organ models. Such models can be 'treated' with serum from patients with reduced organ function after COVID-19. This allows researchers to simulate complex bodily mechanisms and better understand how specific diseases develop and how COVID-19 impacts different organs.

Health researchers need to work more interdisciplinarily

Claus and his colleagues want to use this knowledge for several purposes. It can help identify the need for screenings for diseases in the heart, lungs, and kidneys among specific patient groups. It can also be useful in developing clinical guidelines to help doctors choose the right medication or treatment for patients who are at risk of or have already experienced COVID-related reduced organ function. To ensure that such guidelines are developed in a way that is useful for healthcare professionals in the clinic, the project also includes a behavioral researcher.

"It is important to me that we work interdisciplinarily and involve the people and skills that can contribute to the success of the project. We have a group of talented molecular biologists who are very good at understanding the molecular mechanisms occurring in the organs—we are less adept at formulating clinical guidelines in a way that increases the likelihood of their actual use. Therefore, we found that it would be beneficial to involve a behavioral researcher in the project.

Overall, I believe we researchers can be much better at collaborating interdisciplinarily with other relevant research fields. A lot of money is being allocated to health science research these days, which I am naturally very pleased about. But if we don't do enough to ensure that our research results are effectively shared and communicated and translated into concrete and useful measures, such as by involving behavioral research in our case, we risk that much of our work is done in vain."

Great potential in prevention

If you have followed the public health debate in recent years, you have probably noticed the increasing focus on disease prevention. If we can prevent diseases, or at least delay their onset, we can save people from much suffering and premature death, as well as save a lot on the increasing healthcare costs. Disease prevention is something Claus expects POINT to contribute new knowledge to.

"Disease progression has previously been diffuse, difficult to understand, and therefore naturally also difficult to prevent. But COVID-19 gave us a unique opportunity to study whether and how often relatively simple infectious diseases can trigger other, more serious and often chronic diseases.

Our hope is that knowledge from this project can be transferred to other areas, and it will hopefully also make us wiser about whether, for example, screenings should be introduced for certain patient groups, where we can see from our data that a previous COVID infection has often caused significant damage to one or more organs.

We are also aware that COVID-19 can affect other organs besides the heart, lungs, and kidneys, which we are examining. Therefore, we are collaborating with other projects that look at COVID-19's effects on other organs, such as the EU Horizon-supported COMMUTE project, which focuses on neurodegenerative diseases like dementia.

Hopefully, the projects together can provide us with solid and concrete knowledge about the specific after-effects of COVID-19 in the human body, which can further lead to new guidelines for treating patients experiencing negative long-term health effects after both COVID-19 and a range of other common infectious diseases.

Effective treatment options are great, but we would much prefer to be able to prevent serious diseases from ever occurring, benefiting both individuals and the economy. I truly believe that POINT can contribute to that."

POINT is supported by the EU's Horizon program, which is the EU's primary funding program for research and innovation, and it runs until 2028. You can read more about Claus and his group here.

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