How to effectively treat “Long COVID” is still unclear, but it’s becoming evident that this will be a significant public health issue for years to come.
That’s why Jackson Laboratory (JAX) Professor Peter Robinson, M.D., is working with hospital systems across the U.S. to pool COVID patient data and better define the scope of long COVID. Robinson hopes his findings will explain how long COVID manifests, what symptoms and disorders occur in patients, and how clinicians can best help individual patients.
Long COVID began as anecdotal evidence in mid-2020 when patients who recovered from an infection continued to report various health issues. Conditions included lingering fatigue, heart problems, cognitive disruption, new-onset diabetes, and many other symptoms.
While many cases are relatively mild and resolve within weeks or months, others can be highly debilitating. Some of the first long COVID patients have now been dealing with their symptoms for more than two years.
Robinson, who is working with the National COVID Cohort Collaborative, is now collecting and assessing data from thousands of patients to achieve a better understanding of long COVID. “Our group is developing semantic standards, statistical analysis pipelines, and machine-learning algorithms to leverage this data to better understand the natural history of COVID-19 and long COVID,” Robinson says.
Visit here to learn more about this initiative and the work of JAX, a longtime MCG client.