- The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) RECOVER program will receive an additional $147 million for Long COVID research, building on $515 million allocated earlier this year. Much of this additional funding, totaling $662 million in 2024, will be spent on new clinical trials through the program’s RECOVER-Treating Long COVID (RECOVER-TLC) initiative. Read more about the announcement in this story by Betsy.
- The Open Medicine Foundation, a leading research group studying Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), announced $800,000 in initial funding to study a potential blood-based biomarker for the disease. The study, called Bioquest, will assess over 10,000 proteins and metabolites in the blood samples of 1,200 participants, aiming to identify markers unique to ME with the help of AI and other advanced techniques. “The goal of BioQuest is to identify a biochemical signature for ME/CFS that can be conveniently evaluated through a blood test and would differentiate ME/CFS from other similar conditions,” an OMF press release stated.
- A new study in Brain Communications found that vaccination before SARS-CoV-2 infection did not protect from the neurological symptoms of Long COVID. Scientists assessed over 1,000 patients at a Long COVID clinic focused on these symptoms, comparing those who were and weren’t hospitalized during their acute COVID-19 cases and those who were and weren’t vaccinated prior to getting sick. The study used data from participants’ initial intake exams, including neurological testing and symptom surveys. Both previously-vaccinated and unvaccinated patients had “impaired quality of life in cognitive, fatigue, sleep, anxiety, and depression domains,” the study authors wrote.
- More evidence of a viral SARS-CoV-2 reservoir has emerged in a study from the Journal of Medical Virology. Scientists took 71 tissue samples from the autopsies of 15 people who tested positive for COVID-19 before dying of various causes, and found the virus was detected in “most” organs in the majority of autopsies. “Our results indicate that SARS-CoV-2 can replicate, and evolve in a compartmentalized manner, in different body sites,” the researchers wrote.
Editor’s note, December 19, 11am EST: The fourth summary has been updated to correct information about the patients who were autopsied.
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