In 2004, Amy Proal got an infection that changed her life. “I was in my pre-med, last year of college, and totally tanked,” she says. “No one could tell me what it was, everybody said my blood work was fine — sent to a psychiatrist, the usual story.” She started reading papers from her sickbed and soon realized that she wasn’t the only one with unexplained symptoms that lingered after an infection.
A year later, she was diagnosed with ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome). She managed to improve her symptoms with antivirals and other drugs, and went on to do a PhD in microbiology, studying the lasting consequences of pathogens. In 2018, she co-founded PolyBio, a foundation in Medford, Massachusetts, that advances research on infection-associated chronic illnesses. “Then,” Proal says, “COVID hit.”
Read the rest of this Nature article HERE.