Researchers Race to Understand Long COVID in National Study | The Brink

CEID Founding Director Dr. Nahid Bhadelia and CEID Core Faculty Dr. Jai Marathe, who serve as co-principal investigators of the Boston Medical Center RECOVER Long Covid Study, share insights on the study with BU’s The Brink:

“Being able to fully understand long COVID starts with being able to properly define it, says Jai Marathe, a coprincipal investigator on the RECOVER study. She says that’s been difficult since symptoms are so varied.

‘Patients with long COVID may present with a variety of different symptoms and no two patients are the same,’ says Marathe, a BU School of Medicine assistant professor who specializes in infectious diseases. ‘The important thing to note is that we are learning about long COVID along with our patients—and we are constantly evaluating our treatment recommendations to address the patients’ needs. For some, [symptoms] are mild, but can be debilitating for others.’

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‘The tough part to date has been that studies have used different definitions of long COVID. A well controlled cohort like this one, with a large number of patients, can help clarify the biological and clinical features that are hallmarks of PASC,’ says Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious diseases expert and physician at BMC, BU School of Medicine associate professor, and founding director of BU’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research. Bhadelia is a coprincipal investigator on the RECOVER study—which will take place over the next three years—and is helping BMC collaborate with five other Boston–area hospitals that are also a part of the national project…”

Read the full piece here.