
By SIMON YU, MD, COL, USA (Ret)
Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), opened up a new front in the Coronavirus War by saying we don’t just need to treat the acute disease, we need to treat the underlying conditions that make people more susceptible to serious disease progression. He focused on heart disease, and managing mitigating risk factors such as CVD, diabetes, hypertension and smoking in order to increase people’s odds for recovery. The initial focus has been pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), with risk factors including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and emphysema.
Dr. Frieden calls for better management of people’s underlying health problems to help mitigate the impact of COVID-19. I would take this one step further and say we need to go beyond managing chronic diseases, and find and treat the pathogens that underlie and fuel their pathologies. Why?
In 2001, my work as an Army Reserve medical officer took me to Bolivia to treat 10,000 Andes Indians with parasite medications. Not only did this resolve their parasite problems, but many reported it helped them overcome a range of additional chronic health problems. When I returned to St. Louis, I began to dig deeper with my chronic disease and “mystery disease” patients and treat some of them for parasite problems, and saw many improve. I expanded this “search and destroy” mission with my patients to fungal and dental infections, as I learned many such infections – often overlooked in medicine today – are overlapping, synergistic, and can present as chronic illness.
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