News and Events

Duke Selected as RECOVER Clinical Trials Data Coordinating Center

The Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) has been named the Clinical Trials Data Coordinating Center (DCC) for the NIH RECOVER Initiative. DCRI will partner with the RECOVER Administrative Coordinating Center (ACC), based at RTI International.

Together, the ACC and DCC will oversee the study’s clinical trial infrastructure, establish a patient registry, simultaneously launch prevention and therapeutic multi-intervention studies for both adults and children, and work to accelerate the clinical trial process.

The DCC will align with other, existing COVID research projects, including the RECOVER Consortium and the NIH-funded ACTIV (Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines) studies, to help advance the science on the health effects of COVID.

RECOVER Research Awards

RECOVER has awarded over $37 million in funding for more than 40 research projects. These studies will quickly advance what we know about how COVID affects different body tissues and organs.

The studies will tell us more about how the many different symptoms develop in people who have had COVID. We’ll also learn about what causes the long-term effects of COVID, known as Long COVID.

The research awards include:

• More funding to researchers whose current studies show promise to quickly advance understanding of what causes lasting symptoms in Long COVID.
• New funding to teams of RECOVER researchers from different specialty areas to support further analysis of tissue samples and data collected in current RECOVER studies.

View the awardees

NIH Director’s Blog: Using AI to Advance Understanding of Long COVID Syndrome

One of the most puzzling aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is understanding why some people who have short-term COVID later develop new symptoms. Or they may continue to have symptoms while also developing new ones. These Long COVID symptoms can vary a lot from person to person, which makes it hard to understand why some people are more likely to have Long COVID. In this blog post, NIH Director Lawrence Tabak, DDS, PhD, discusses an important new RECOVER study published in The Lancet Digital Health that used artificial intelligence computer models to help unravel this mystery.

RECOVER Publication: Scientists use Electronic Health Records and Machine Learning to Better Define Long COVID

In a study published in The Lancet Digital Health, Pfaff and colleagues used electronic health record (EHR) data to find more than 100,000 likely cases of Long COVID in an EHR database of more than 13 million people.

The authors examined information from nearly 98,000 COVID-19 patients on demographics, use of health care services, medications, and diagnoses in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) database—a national, centralized public database led by NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). They used those data with information from nearly 600 patients at Long COVID clinics to create machine learning (ML) computer models that could identify potential Long COVID patients.

The ML models proved to be accurate and identified about 100,000 people in the database whose profiles matched those of people with Long COVID. The study findings will help researchers understand the characteristics and risk factors linked to Long COVID diagnosis and will also help identify potential Long COVID patients for clinical trials. As more data sources are identified, these models can be improved and adapted based on study needs.

RECOVER Adult Study Protocol Available

The full RECOVER research protocol, or study plan, for adults taking part in RECOVER studies is now available. The study protocol serves as the RECOVER research playbook, enabling researchers to speak the same language, use the same methods, and examine the same types of data. We are finished planning the adult study protocol, but the protocol may change over time as we learn more. If the protocol is updated, we will share it on the RECOVER website, recoverCOVID.org. A version of the protocol in easy-to-understand language will be available soon.

NIH Builds Large Nationwide Study Population of Tens of Thousands to Support Research on Long-term Effects of COVID-19

The NIH awarded nearly $470 million to build a national study population of diverse research volunteers and support large-scale studies on the long-term effects of COVID-19. The NIH Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative made the parent award to New York University (NYU) Langone Health, New York City, which will make multiple subawards to more than 100 researchers at more than 30 institutions and serves as the RECOVER Clinical Science Core.

Breakthrough Infections in Vaccinated People Less Likely to Cause "Long COVID"

The evidence shows that vaccines make a big difference in protecting individuals and communities against infection and severe illness from SARS-CoV-2 infection. New research shows another important reason to get the vaccine. In the event of a breakthrough COVID infection, people who are fully vaccinated are less likely to develop Long COVID. The symptoms of Long COVID include fatigue, brain fog, muscle pain, and other debilitating symptoms that can last for months after recovery from an initial infection, whether the person had symptoms or not. Though we still have much to learn about PASC, including Long COVID, vaccines offer a very effective way to protect against COVID-19 and reduce the chances of getting Long COVID if people do get infected.

COVID Long-Haulers Get Disability Civil Rights Protections

On July 26, 2021, the Federal government released guidance that people with PASC and Long COVID can be protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. PASC and Long COVID will be considered a disability if the condition or its symptoms “substantially limit” major life activities, such as work or school. Read this fact sheet for more details.

NIH Infrastructure Awards to Support Research on Post-COVID Conditions

NIH recently announced the Core resource awards that will provide critical infrastructure for new research studies under the RECOVER Initiative. NYU Langone Health was awarded over $14 million in support of the Clinical Science Core, which will build the RECOVER Consortium; harmonize and coordinate data within the Consortium; and develop methods for monitoring protocols, including recruitment, data quality, and safety measures to identify adverse events. The Biostatistics Center at Massachusetts General Hospital was awarded more than $8.6 million in support of the Data Resource Core, which will help enable tracking and searchability of results across all sources of data, from clinical studies to electronic health records.