Researching the long-term effects of COVID

Doctors generally define long COVID as a post-acute condition that causes a wide range of symptoms for over a month after testing positive for the virus. But some mysteries, like the condition’s biggest risk factors, still perplex scientists.

Last month, UW Medicine, Swedish Health Services and the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle joined the nationwide National Institutes of Health study and will contribute data from Pacific Northwest patients.

The study — known as RECOVER (Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery) — is expected to be the largest and most comprehensive long COVID research effort in the U.S. to date.

“I think it’ll give us value essentially in the numbers — the numbers of enrollees and their clinical characterization, and the numbers of blood tests and types of abnormalities we may be able to confirm with larger studies,” said Dr. Helen Chu, associate professor (Allergy and Infectious Diseases), and the study’s lead UW Medicine investigator.