Cardiologists have long known that up to half of all heart attacks and strokes occur among apparently healthy individuals who do not smoke and do not have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes, the “standard modifiable risk factors” which doctors often call “SMuRFs.”  How to identify risk among the “SMuRF-Less” has been an elusive goal in preventive cardiology, particularly in women who are often under-diagnosed and under-treated.

A new project will use total-body PET imaging to get a better understanding of disease processes in people with long COVID syndromes.