Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.jp. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

Hi, and welcome to COVID-, a scientific American podcast series. This is your fast track update on the COVID pandemic. We bring you up to speed on the science behind the

most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means.

I'm Tanya Lewis, one of Scientific American's senior health editors.

Josh is taking the week off.

Today I'm going to talk about how the antiviral pexlovid may protect against long COVID,

and what we know about the effectiveness of the new booster shots.

We've talked a lot about long COVID on this show, lingering symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog,

headache, difficulty breathing, etc. But so far, there haven't been many effective ways of

preventing it. Vaccination provides some protection,

but the only way to totally reduce the risk is avoiding COVID altogether. But there's some

promising news. A recent pre-print study of COVID patients with at least one risk factor for

severe disease found that those who took the antiviral Paxlovid had a 26% lower chance of developing long COVID symptoms

three months later, compared with the control group. There were 9,000 patients in the

Plexlovod group and about 47,000 in the control group. Those in the Paxlovid group had a lower

risk of 10 out of 12 long COVID symptoms. These include an abnormal heart rhythm, ischemic heart disease,

pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, fatigue, liver disease, muscle pain, diabetes, and

cognitive impairment. And the protective effect was seen in people who were vaccinated,

...