NIH will spending nearly $470 million to study long-term effects of COVID

Parent Grant

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be spending nearly $470 million to study the long-term effects of COVID-19, NIH announced September 15. The agency has awarded a "parent" grant to New York University (NYU) Langone Health, which will in turn make awards to more than 100 researchers at more than 30 institutions, according to NIH.

The objective is to uncover the reasons why some people have prolonged symptoms (known as long-haul COVID) or develop new or returning symptoms after recovering from COVID-19. NIH related that the most common symptoms of long-haul COVID include pain, headaches, fatigue, "brain fog," shortness of breath, anxiety, depression, fever, chronic cough and sleep problems.

"We know some people have had their lives completely upended by the major long-term effects of COVID-19," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins related. "These studies will aim to determine the cause and find much needed answers to prevent this often-debilitating condition and help those who suffer move toward recovery."

Although COVID-19 may feel endless when symptoms linger a month or more after an infection, many people are back to feeling like themselves within about three months. Many more have recovered at six months, said Ravi Ganesh, who treats long-haul COVID-19 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

NIH’s program is called Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER). Data from RECOVER will encompass clinical information, laboratory tests and analyses of various stages of recovery after infection.

Dr. Gary Gibbons, who is the director of NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, said, "This scientifically rigorous approach puts into place a collaborative and multidisciplinary research community inclusive of diverse research participants that are critical to informing the treatment and prevention of the long-term effects of COVID-19."

NIH’s new studies are designed to provide insights into the incidence and prevalence of long-term effects from COVID-19, the range of symptoms, underlying causes, risk factors and outcomes, the agency said. Participants in the studies will include adults, children and pregnant people who are in the throes of COVID or recovering from it. Funding for the COVID study is supported by the American Rescue Plan.

"Given the range of symptoms that have been reported, intensive research using all available tools is necessary to understand what happens to stall recovery from this terrible virus," explained Dr. Walter Koroshetz, who is the director of NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. "Importantly, the tissue pathology studies in RECOVER will enable in-depth studies of the virus's effects on all body systems."

As of September 2021, one in every 500 Americans had died of COVID-19. As many infections have gone undetected, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that, as of May 2021, there could be a total 120.2 million infections in the United States, or more than a third of the total population. COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020, behind heart disease and cancer.