(Radio Iowa) – People from western Iowa and eastern Nebraska are being recruited to take part in what’s being described as a comprehensive post-COVID study. David Warren, co-principal investigator and a neurological sciences professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, explains the purpose of the research. “There’s not a good sense of how prevalent or what long-term side effects there are with long COVID or post-COVID syndrome,” Warren says. “The intent here is to try to figure it out.”

The national study is being launched through a 450-million dollar, four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health. It will study up to 20-thousand adults and children to better understand the full scope of post-COVID symptoms. “It’s important that we understand what post-COVID looks like,” Warren says. “Doing so will help us understand the future of American health care since most Americans now have had COVID, more than half of American adults and still more children have had COVID, so understanding post-COVID will help us understand how to treat people better in the future.”

The study is part of a consortium led by West Virginia University and is called RECOVER, for Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery.“We’re recruiting people who’ve had COVID, people who know they’ve had COVID, people who think they might have had COVID,” Warren says. “We’re also recruiting people who haven’t had COVID or at least don’t think they’ve had COVID.” Dr. Andrew Vasey, the other co-principal investigator and an infectious disease physician at U-N-M-C, says the duration of so-called long COVID varies greatly from person to person.

“A lot of people will get better with time so whether it’s three months, six months, nine months, it’s hard to say, you can’t really tell that,” Vasey says. “We’re seeing people that got infected in early 2020 that are still having issues, so some people have not gotten better yet.” Participants may make two to four visits a year to Omaha and involvement could include anything from being asked for information about their health, symptoms, physical activity and sleep. Some may be eligible to receive medical tests.

For more information, send email to: recover.study@unmc.edu.