271 - COVID-19 and Immunosuppressant Drugs
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2021
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Does taking immunosuppressant drugs put you at higher risk of more serious disease from COVID-19? Dr. Caleb Alexander and PhD candidate Kayte Andersen talk with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about their new research looking into this question. They also discuss future research to tackle the next set of critical questions for the millions of people who need these medications to stay healthy.
KEYWORDS: immune response
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas |
| 0:34.4 | or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jhhh.edu. |
| 0:41.1 | That's public health question at jhhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:47.2 | Today, I speak with Professor Caleb Alexander and Katie Anderson, a PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:56.0 | Our topic is their new paper addressing a long-standing question. |
| 1:01.0 | Are patients on medications that suppress their immune systems more vulnerable to severe cases of COVID? |
| 1:09.0 | Let's listen. |
| 1:11.7 | Caleb Alexander, Katie Anderson. |
| 1:13.6 | Thank you so much for joining me to talk about this important question of what happens to people |
| 1:18.5 | who are on immunosuppressive medications when they get COVID-19. |
| 1:21.8 | We've gotten a lot of questions about this at our email address, public health question at |
| 1:25.9 | jh.edu. |
| 1:32.0 | Why did you study this question? Maybe I'll start with you, Professor Alexander. |
| 1:37.1 | Well, thanks for having us and giving us the opportunity to share the results of our work. We were interested in looking at the outcome of individuals taking chronic immunosuppressive medicines |
| 1:43.6 | because going into the pandemic, |
| 1:46.0 | there was enormous concern that these individuals may be at heightened risk for more severe COVID outcomes. |
| 1:54.0 | On the other hand, we know that part of the pathogenesis of COVID infection is often a hyper-inflammatory response and an immune system that's |
| 2:04.8 | kicked into overdrive. And so prior to our doing this work, there was reason to believe both |
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