Major study to investigate long-haul COVID-19

September 15, 2021 – The National Institutes of Health have launched an ambitious study to unravel the mysteries of the persistent symptoms of COVID-19, which are sometimes referred to as long-term COVID-19.

Early research suggests that about 1 in 3 people will continue to show symptoms months after they pass the acute stage of their COVID-19 infections, which means millions of Americans are still struggling to regain physical health. after catching the virus.

“One of the really troubling aspects of this terrible pandemic could be the persistence of this long trail of effects on people who are not able to return, to return to their pre-infected state, and we have to do everything our best to get answers to that, ”NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, said at a press conference.

“It is being taken very seriously and being advanced on a scale that has not really been attempted before for something like this,” he said.

The company will combine several studies already underway in long-distance COVID-19 clinics in the United States, along with the recruitment of new participants, to create a group of about 30,000 people called RECOVER, for the Researching COVID to initiative. Enhance Recovery.

Experts involved in the project have promised that it will include a racially diverse group of adults, children and pregnant women. People will be enrolled in the study over the next 12 months.

Collins specifies that normally, a study of this scope would take 3 or 4 years to organize, but given the urgency of the situation, the pace of the project had accelerated considerably.

The NIH plans to award $ 470 million to 30 research teams across the United States.

Gary Gibbons, MD, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, compared RECOVER to the famous Framingham Heart Study, which characterized the risk factors for heart disease.

He said community groups, like the one RECOVER aims to create, are “very good at detecting the incidence of a disease and its risk factors, characterizing it in a deep way.”