The National Institutes of Health has announced the first phase of its four-year multi-billion dollar initiative to learn more about why some Covid-19 survivors have long-lasting symptoms even after the virus leaves the body.
The group of patients is known as the “lung haulers,” although the NIH calls the condition “Post-Acute Sequelae or SARS-CoV-2 Infection,” or PASC. (The word ‘sequelae’ comes from Latin and means a condition that occurs after an illness. The word ‘sequel’ has the same origin.)
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The NIH study aims to learn how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, can potentially lead to lasting symptoms, such as severe fatigue, brain fog, headache, fever, and shortness of breath.
The symptoms “can range from mildly irritating to even quite incapacitated,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during a White House briefing on Covid-19 Wednesday.
“We believe that the insight we gain from this research will also improve our understanding of the basic biology of how humans recover from infection and improve our understanding of other chronic postviral syndromes and autoimmune diseases,” said NIH- director Dr. Francis Collins in a statement Tuesday.
Congress previously allocated $ 1.15 billion to the NIH to study long-haul vehicles. That money will be spent in four years. The study announced this week is the first in a series of such projects.
Researchers will “look at large databases for resources such as electronic health records and health symptoms, and they will study a number of biological specimens,” Fauci said.
The research initiative also hopes to answer questions about how many Covid-19 survivors may be affected, who are most vulnerable, and what could be the underlying cause of long-term symptoms.
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A study from Wuhan, China, published last month, found that symptoms of Covid-19 can last up to six months.
Of the approximately 1,700 patients, 63 percent said they still had fatigue or muscle weakness six months later, and about a quarter reported persistent anxiety or depression, as well as trouble sleeping.
“We do not yet know the magnitude of the problem, but given the number of individuals of all ages who are or will be infected,” Collins wrote, “the impact on public health could be significant.”
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