NIH directors highlight RECOVER’s progress and impact
Editorial by NIH leaders shares how RECOVER has worked and will continue working to ease the suffering of those living with Long COVID.
Science Translational Medicine recently published a special issue dedicated to Long COVID and other infection-associated chronic conditions. In addition to findings from recent research, the issue includes an editorial by NIH Directors Jeanne Marrazzo, M.D., M.P.H., Gary H. Gibbons, M.D., and Walter Koroshetz, M.D.
The editorial entitled—"Initiating Long COVID RECOVERy”—describes RECOVER’s progress to understand, diagnose, prevent, and treat Long COVID. RECOVER’s signature accomplishments include:
- Enrolling 15,200 adults, including approximately 2,200 pregnant people, and more than 24,000 babies, children, and young adults in observational studies. These studies have significantly advanced our understanding of the symptoms that define Long COVID.
- Collecting more than 907,000 blood, tissue, and other samples, called biospecimens from people taking part in RECOVER studies. These biospecimens support research to identify the changes in the body that cause Long COVID.
- Gaining important insights from the electronic health records (EHRs) of 60 million people located across the United States. Findings from EHR studies have expanded our knowledge of who is more at risk of getting Long COVID and why.
- Designing and launching five clinical trial platforms testing 13 different potential treatments for some of the most burdensome symptoms of Long COVID.
In recounting this progress, Drs. Gibbons, Koroshetz, and Marrazzo also express appreciation for the many contributions made by patients, caregivers, healthcare providers, and community. “People affected by Long COVID have been at the center of RECOVER from the very beginning, playing critical roles in designing studies, responding to surveys, serving on governance and publication groups, and guiding the initiative,” they write.
Drs. Gibbons, Koroshetz, and Marrazzo close the editorial with a discussion of the firm foundation RECOVER research provides for future medical research. “Infection-associated chronic conditions remain complex, challenging, and perhaps one of the least understood areas of medicine,” they explain. “However, there remains hope that the efforts of research participants and scientists, throughout the United States and around the world, to understand and treat Long COVID may yield discoveries that generalize to other infection-associated chronic conditions like myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).”
Read the full text of “Initiating Long COVID RECOVERy” on the Science Translational Medicine website.