Episode 20: Dr Betty Raman and Bill Hinshaw – Fatigue and Mitochondria

With the Long Covid community still thin on treatment trials and grappling with the potential mechanisms, this week we had the pleasure of discussing both. We spoke to Dr Betty Raman about fatigue and the role of mitochondria in Long Covid. And then to Axcella Therapeutics’ Bill Hinshaw about a potential treatment that is now undergoing Phase 2 clinical trials with Raman and her team.

 Dr Betty Raman has been studying the long-term impacts of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.  A cardiologist and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) wizard, Raman, and her team at the Radcliffe Department of Medicine at Oxford, have noticed changes in the organs on the scans of post-Covid patients and believe that some of our symptoms could be explained by mitochondrial dysfunction.

Raman was approached by the clinical stage bio-tech company and will use her magnetic resonance spectroscopy to assess improvements in mitochondrial function in post-Covid patients in trials of AXA1125.  Axcella Therapeutics’ CEO Bill Hinshaw sets out, incredibly eloquently, their hopes for this potential treatment in Long Covid and other conditions, as well as giving insights into the process of clinical trials and drug registration.