Episode 70: Benjamin Abramoff M.D. - Serotonin Depletion

As Director of the Post Covid Assessment and Recovery Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Benjamin Abramoff, M.D., has used his knowledge of rehabilitation of spinal cord injury to help over 2000 people with Long Covid.

A Physiatrist with extensive understanding of the management of (currently) incurable debilitating multi-systemic illness, Abramoff has been working to enable Long Covid patients to maximise their quality of life with symptomatic relief.  But, with access to top level scientists with a willingness to understand the condition, Abramoff has tried to look deeper to help those suffering.

Tracking a large cohort, Abramoff and the team at Penn Medicine, performed systemic symptom analysis of 1540 individuals before designing a metabolomics study which took the plasma of 58 Long Covid patients. Published in Cell, the most significant finding was that serotonin is depleted in all those that did not recover from COVID-19.  Cross-referencing with the LIINC study data they also established that the reduction in serotonin negatively correlated with the patients’ symptoms.

Abramoff talks us through the key findings from their study, explaining the role of interferons in viral inflammation, and the effects on tryptophan, the amino acid which is responsible for the creation of serotonin.  He explains their clinical approach to patients and what he believes should be the next steps - the required studies and clinical trials - to enable us to address what he believes to be the most probable root of Long Covid: viral persistence.