Ziyad Al-Aly
Ziyad Al-Aly is an American physician and clinical epidemiologist who is currently Director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center and Chief of the Research and Development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System. He is also a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. He has led multiple studies on Long COVID and its sequelae.
Early life
Al-Aly was born in Tripoli, Lebanon to teachers. He grew up during the Lebanese civil war which dominated Lebanon from 1975 to 1990, emigrating to the United States in 2000.Education
Al-Aly holds a medical degree from the American University of Beirut. He completed his post-graduate medical education at Saint Louis University and Washington University School of Medicine.Career
Al-Aly's research work has been cited more than a 140,000 times and he has an h-index of more than 90 according to Google Scholar. Al-Aly was featured on Clarivate ; the list recognizes researchers with significant influence, top 1% cited papers, and broad community recognition.Long COVID research
Al-Aly led work which provided the first systematic characterization of the post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection. He subsequently led work which characterized the increased risks of cardiovascular disease, neurologic disorders, mental health disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, dyslipidemia, and kidney disease following SARS-CoV-2 infection. His lab also produced evidence characterizing the effects of COVID-19 vaccines on long COVID and the health consequences of repeated infections with SARS-CoV-2.In 2024, Al-Aly testified before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee as an expert witness on Long Covid. He called for the establishment of an NIH institute to address Long Covid and Infection-Associated Chronic Conditions and Illnesses — also called post-acute infection syndromes — with a funding of at least $1 billion per year.