Boston sites will recruit more than 900 people for long COVID study
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Six Boston area hospitals will recruit more than 900 participants for a multiyear study of the effects of long COVID.
The study, which is part of the NIH’s RECOVER Initiative, will follow the 909 participants over 3 years.
The six Boston-area locations involved in the study are Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Tufts Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital.
“The Boston COVID Recovery Cohort represents a unique collaboration across health systems,” Bruce Levy, MD, principal investigator and chief of the Brigham and Women’s pulmonary division, said in a press release.
“COVID-19 has laid bare the need for large-scale collaboration — not on the scale of individual investigators or even hospitals, but rather on the scale of health systems,” Levy said. “We’ve come together seeking answers to pressing questions, and we hope that the collaborations we are forging can serve as a model for other research endeavors around COVID and beyond.”
The study will include people who were not only hospitalized with COVID-19, but also people who were affected with mild illness. It will include people who have experienced long COVID and those who had no long-term symptoms at all.
Researchers involved with the new project will also conduct a human tissue study using clinical samples collected during autopsies to understand the virus’ effects on different organ systems.
Long COVID has been linked to more than 200 symptoms involving nearly every organ and regulatory system.
“It’s important that we work to expand our knowledge about the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 virus in order to address — and help prevent — another public health crisis,” Nahid Bhadelia, MD, an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center and director of the Boston University Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research, said in the release.
Additionally, the researchers will also observe underlying social determinants of health.
“It is critical that the voices of the communities that have suffered so much over the last year and a half are partners and at the center of this research, and this collaboration is designed to do exactly that,” Janice John, MHS, MHCDS, principal investigator and clinical investigator for long COVID at Cambridge Health Alliance, said in the release.
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