Virginia Commonwealth University Health is enrolling local families in a multi-hospital study to determine the effects of long COVID-19 on children and young adults.
The VCU School of Nursing will lead the study, which hopes to analyze 240 families with children or young adults 25 years or younger in central Virginia.
Interested families can register at rampages.us/virginiakids4covidproject.
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Long COVID can included a wide variety of symptoms, including fatigue, joint pain, headaches and stomach pain. It’s unclear why some people’s symptoms last weeks or months, while others’ clear up in days.
Much of what is known about long COVID comes from studies of adults. VCU’s project is part of the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery initiative, or RECOVER, a nationwide study funded by the National Institutes of Health.
What is less known is the effect on children. VCU will study any children and young adults who have had symptoms from COVID-19. It will also study children and young adults who have not had COVID-19 to determine whether the pandemic affected their health in other ways.
Researchers will collect saliva and blood and study participants’ lungs, heart and neurodevelopment. Participants will be monitored for up to four years. Some research will be conducted in Richmond-area neighborhoods closer to where participants live.
Children and parents will be paid for their participation. VCU is joining with Rhode Island Hospital and New York University Langone Health to perform the study.
“The RECOVER project is going to help us understand long COVID so we might develop treatments for those affected by the pandemic for years to come, but it’s also going to give back to the families deciding to participate in the study by understanding important information about their children’s development, health and mental well-being,” said Amy Salisbury, an associate dean at the VCU School of Nursing who is one of the principal investigators.