Pathobiology 2027

Infection-Associated Chronic Illnesses (IACI), such as chronic Lyme Disease and Long COVID, lack objective, mechanism-based biomarkers, leaving clinicians dependent on inadequate symptom-based diagnosis. To address this, we test the central hypothesis that systemic barrier breakdown, including gut, oral and blood-brain barriers, is the foundational mechanism driving the systemic inflammation and neurocognitive dysfunction observed in these patients.