Georgios Kitsios, MD, PhD

Research Project:
Lung COVID-19 Interactions with Microbiota and Host (LUCID-IMHO)

Grant Awarded:

COVID-19 Respiratory Virus Research Award

Research Topics:

biomarkers
clinical research
computational biology

Research Diseases:

ARDS
COVID-19
pneumonia

The sickest patients with COVID-19 require life support on a ventilator to help their breathing while their immune system fights off the virus. About half of COVID-19 patients who end up on a ventilator do not survive, and even those who survive suffer from long-lasting consequences. Investigators to date have focused on how the SARS-CoV-2 virus is cleared from the lungs, and whether an overtly active immune system can at times cause more damage than benefit. However, about 50% of COVID-19 patients on ventilators develop a serious, life-threatening infection, called ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), caused by organisms other than SARS-CoV-2. We will investigate how the virus and the immune system interact with microbes in the ventilated lungs of sick patients with COVID-19. Our goal is to define targets for more timely therapeutic and preventive interventions for VAP in vulnerable patients with COVID-19 and similar viral illnesses in future epidemics.

Page last updated: October 3, 2023

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