Are you battling chronic brain fog after COVID-19? Local researchers want your help
For most people, the COVID-19 pandemic is in the rearview mirror. For others who were infected, some symptoms refuse to fade.
Estimates vary widely in the percentage of Americans suffering from what was defined early in the pandemic as long-haul COVID — illness that did not completely resolve in the months and sometimes years after initial infection.
Symptoms can include joint/muscle pain, brain fog, fatigue and more.
Clinical researchers at UW Medicine in Seattle are taking part in testing therapies for the cognitive effects of long COVID, part of clinical trials taking place on a national scale. At the research work’s core is an attempt to figure out why some people struggle to make a full recovery.
The work is part of the RECOVER (Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery) directed by the National Institutes of Health. UW Medicine is an enrollment site for a national clinical trial.
RECOVER encompasses several studies nationwide exploring potential therapies.
UW announced this month that the Seattle site is seeking participants for the RECOVER-NEURO portion of studies.
According to UW’s news release, the study “will examine interventions for brain fog, memory lapses, difficulty with attention and other cognitive problems that persistently trouble some people who have had COVID.”
It added that those suffering from long-COVID “can experience symptoms continuously or intermittently for months after their initial infection. Symptoms vary among individuals. Commonly reported problems are fatigue, brain fog, decreased physical endurance, memory lapses or difficulty learning and solving problems.”
In explaining the research, UW said, “This simultaneous gathering of data will determine more quickly which therapies are effective. Interventions that do not show promise can be ended, and those trials would then switch to test other approaches.”
“UW Medicine researchers will evaluate the effectiveness of online cognitive-training programs and transcranial direct-current stimulation to reduce these neurological symptoms,” it added.
Reseachers for now have recruited 24,000 participants and are analyzing millions of health records. They are using that information to help guide Phase 2 trials for long COVID therapies, “which typically test the safety and effectiveness of treatments in groups of 100 to 300 participants,” according to UW’s information about the program.
UW Medicine in Seattle is one of the sites for the first two clinical trials in this series.
The research team is headed by Dr. Helen Chu, professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Chu’s team gained recognition early in the pandemic as among the first in the nation to establish COVID monitoring to track initial cases. Chu’s team had already established tracking tools from their Seattle flu study.
For more information
▪ RECOVER-NEURO research program information: trials.recovercovid.org
▪ For those interested in enrolling in RECOVER-NEURO, email uwrecoverstudy@uw.edu
This story was originally published March 10, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
