Forging ahead on future research
It’s clear there is more work to do. There are investigators working on banking tissue samples from people with long COVID to learn more, for example.
Also, finding a biomarker unique to long COVID could vastly improve the precision of diagnosing long COVID, especially if the dog sniffing option does not pan out.
Of the thousands of biomarker possibilities, Dr. Hornig said, “maybe that’s one or two that ultimately make a real impact on patient care. So it’s going to be critical to find those quickly, translate them, and make them available.”
In the meantime, some answers might come from a large study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is funding the “Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery” project using $470 million from the American Rescue Plan. Investigators at NYU Langone Health are leading the effort and plan to share the wealth by funding more than 100 researchers at more than 30 institutions to create a “metacohort” to study long COVID. More information is available at recovercovid.org.
“Fortunately, through the global research effort, we are now really starting to expand our understanding of how long COVID manifests, how common it is, and what the underlying mechanisms may be,” Dr. Purpura said.
A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.