Researchers in the United States are studying long COVID in adults and children in the RECOVER initiative funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The RECOVER initiative was launched by the NIH in February to investigate the post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC). The initiative was earlier called the PASC Initiative. Since the purpose of the study was to investigate why some Covid-19 patients continue to have long-term symptoms or develop new symptoms even after recovering from the illness, it was later renamed as the RECOVER Initiative (REsearching COVID to Enhance Recovery) to reconcile better with the study objective.

Earlier this week, the NIH awarded a sum of around $470 million to New York University (NYU) Langone Health, New York City to act as the RECOVER Clinical Science Core. NYU will make sub-awards for research to be carried out at different  institutions across the country.

The initiative will include many ongoing trials in the US and also enrol new participants. Around 30,000 participants would be assessed.

Studies will include adults, pregnant women and children. Patients will be recruited both in the acute and the post-acute phase of COVID-19. Data will encompass laboratory tests, tissue pathology, and information gathered from around 40 million electronic health records of patients. Mobile health technologies like smartphone apps and wearable devices will collect data in real time. The master study protocols have been developed by researchers in collaboration with long COVID patients and representatives from advocacy organizations to ensure uniformity of data and evaluation of the study participants.To know more about the Initiative, you can visit the website https://recovercovid.org/.

Long-COVID has become a public health issue now. It is a debilitating condition for many. And children are not spared. The most common long-COVID symptoms include pain, headaches, fatigue, “brain fog,” shortness of breath, anxiety, depression, fever, chronic cough and sleep problems.

Multidisciplinary research is expected to provide answers to several questions such as causes, risk factors, clinical types and also potential effective treatment options including preventive strategies.

(Source: NIH, Sept. 15 & June 10, 2021)