Health Rising

Visible At Last? Are Long COVID and ME/CFS Tissue Diseases? The PolyBio 2026 Symposium Pt I

PolyBio's 6th symposium was its best yet. In part one of a two-part series, we heard about their $10 million Long COVID Cure project, which they believe will cut 15 years off what would otherwise have been an interminably long search for treatments.

Then it was onto a series of presentations focusing on tissue studies (arteries, lymph, retina, gut, brainstem), which suggested that if you want to get to the heart of these diseases, you've got to go deep into the tissues.

Finally, we heard some good early news about two gut treatments that appear to be having an impact.

Health Rising Donation Drive Update

Thanks to everyone who's gotten us 2/3rds of the way there :)

Visible At Last? Are Long COVID and ME/CFS Tissue Diseases? The PolyBio 2026 Symposium Pt I - Health Rising Geoff’s Narration The GIST   The 2026 PolyBio Spring Symposium – Pt I One way to gauge the health of a field is by the number of conferences/symposia it supports. From the looks of things, the long–COVID and ME/CFS fields are moving up: The International ME/CFS conference – May 7-8 […]

Hitting the Target? ME/CFS and long COVID T-Cell Researchers on Uncovering the Precise Drivers of the Illnesses

Researchers are increasingly confident that precision medicine - the ability to match a treatment to your biology - is coming for these diseases.

T-cell researchers are at the top of that list. Not only are they now sure that these diseases are driven by pathogens/autoimmune processes, but they've also begun using sophisticated technologies they believe will allow them to uncover the precise drivers of these illnesses.

Find out more

Hitting the Target? ME/CFS and long COVID T-Cell Researchers on Uncovering the Precise Drivers of the Illnesses - Health Rising Dr. Selin and company believe they can solve one of the key mysteries of ME/CFS and long COVID: exactly why the T-cells are getting pummeled.

Whether long COVID is an autoimmune disease has been one of the great questions facing the field.

Finally, we have an answer. It is, at least, in part. A recent study provided dramatic evidence that autoimmune processes are significantly affecting many long COVID patients - and it bolstered autoimmune work in ME/CFS as well.

There's still a lot of work to do - tracking down which autoantibodies are doing the damage is not going to be easy in these complex disorders, but it is doable, and it is one place this field will likely concentrate on after this study.

The goal, as always, will be to precisely match LC and ME/CFS patients to the appropriate autoimmune treatment.

Check it out

https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2026/06/02/autoimmune-long-covid-subset/

Health Rising's Donation Drive Update

Thanks to everyone who has brought us to almost 40% of our goal :)

Major Study Validates a Long COVID Autoimmune Subset - Health Rising A major study determines that autoimmunity is causing major symptoms in long COVID ultimately laying the groundwork for precision-guided treatments

Solving the ME/CFS and Long COVID Jigsaw Puzzle: PrecisionLife’s Steven Gardner Talks

PrecisionLife believes they can break the code on ME/CFS and long COVID and they're back with new, much larger ME/CFS study.

Instead of 14 genes they found over 2,000! In a talk with CEO and founder Steve Gardner, he explained that ME/CFS is highly complex but solveable, reported that PrecisionLife has identified over 40 drugs that they think may help, noted that ME/CFS and long COVID are similar but different, and pointed to a fascinating process whereby PrecisionLife is identifying "resilience genes" that a) protect people from coming down with ME/CFS and b) could help people recover from it. Check it out

Solving the ME/CFS and Long COVID Jigsaw Puzzle: PrecisionLife's Steven Gardner Talks - Health Rising Geoff’s Narration The GIST “It’s (ME/CFS) a jigsaw puzzle, right? And we have a couple of the pieces that I think are going to be really important to framing out the rest of the picture.” Steve Gardner, CEO and co-founder of PrecisionLife I spilled the beans early in my talk […]

Sticky Nets and Damaged Blood Vessels: A Long COVID Subset is Born?

Could poor blood flows be at the heart of long COVID? The deepest dive yet into the blood vessel issue found microclots, "sticky nets", and wounded blood vessels in a large subset of young people with long COVID. Validating the findings could lead to a range of new therapies being tested.

Check out what they found in

Sticky Nets and Damaged Blood Vessels: A Long COVID Subset is Born? - Health Rising A long COVID study uncovers a subset of patients with microclots and signs of blood vessel damage who, if the findings are validated, might benefit from rarely used treatments.

A Novel Immunomodulatory Strategy for ME/CFS + A Paradox Resolved?

Last year, a researcher called this pathway the "dominant metabolic pathway" in ME/CFS.

This year, an Open Medicine Foundation study uncovered a problem in it that could leave the cells in ME/CFS "inert and unresponsive".

Not only that, but this problem could potentially explain a paradox that has bedeviled the ME/CFS field for over a decade.

That's pretty good stuff, but the icing on the cake is that the Open Medicine Foundation is using a "novel immunodulatory strategy" in their new clinical trials program to see if they can fix the problem.

Things are moving fast. It all goes to show that you never know what's going to pop up. Check it out.

A Novel Immunomodulatory Strategy for ME/CFS + A Paradox Resolved? - Health Rising A novel immunomodulatory treatment approach to ME/CFS appears and a paradox could be resolved....

Takeaways From the Big Long COVID Clinical Trials

A good number of long COVID clinical trials have been done, and more are on the way, but only ten "Tier 1" trials - trials large enough for us to trust their results - have been published.

Two were modest successes, and the rest bombed. That didn't prevent them from giving us more clues about what will work in long COVID, though.

Check out the two "winners" and what we've learned in

Takeaways From the Big Long COVID Clinical Trials - Health Rising Only 10 major long COVID clinical trials have been published thus far but that's enough to come away with some interesting takeaways. They include treatments that prevent long COVID don't necessarily treat it, broader based treatments are probably best, manipulating the gut can help with fatigue (bu...

I had to do something. The ME/CFS studies were piling up, and I was way behind - so I threw them all together and did a big ask: could these very different studies that were peering into different compartments of the body - be uncovering similar themes?

That is - could the same problems be present - wherever you looked?

It turned out that they might be! Check it out in

Are All Roads Leading to the Immune System and the Blood in ME/CFS? - Health Rising What happens when you throw ten or so very different ME/CFS studies together? You get some core themes popping out. Check out the blog and see what they are.

The Massive Sequence ME/CFS and Long COVID Project Aims to Find the Precise Drivers of These Illnesses

Big, potentially groundbreaking projects, the likes of which we've rarely seen before, keep cropping up in ME/CFS and long COVID.

The latest - a $20 million effort to sequence the entire genome of 18,000 ME/CFS and long COVID patients - may take the cake.

The most ambitious ME/CFS effort yet, this project could reveal precise drivers of these conditions.

Check it out

The Massive Sequence ME/CFS and Long COVID Project Aims to Find Precision Drivers of These Illnesses - Health Rising The massive Sequence ME/CFS and long COVID whole genome sequencing project aims to find the precision drivers of these illnesses

Blood, S*x and Inflammation: Did the IMPACC Long COVID Study Point to Core Issues in Long COVID and ME/CFS?

Does it all come down to the fact that the blood is not getting through to the muscles, organs or brain? Is it as simple as that?

That's what one of the most comprehensive long COVID studies and recent ME/CFS research suggests.

That makes sense on so many levels. Check it out

Blood, S*x and Inflammation: Did the IMPACC Long COVID Study Point to Core Issues in Long COVID and ME/CFS? - Health Rising The big IMPACC long COVID study findings suggest that inflammation and reduced male s*x hormone levels may be playing havoc with the small blood vessels in long COVID -= and ME/CFS