The National Institutes of Health has announced the first phase of its four-year-billion initiative to learn more about why some Covid-19 survivors have long-term symptoms, even after the virus leaves the body.
The group of patients is known as the ‘long throwers’, although the NIH calls the condition ‘Post-Acute Sequelae or SARS-CoV-2 infection’, or PASC. (The word “sequelae” comes from Latin, meaning a condition that occurs after an illness. The word “sequelae” has the same origin.)
Full coverage of coronavirus outbreak
The NIH research aims to learn how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, can potentially lead to lasting symptoms such as severe fatigue, brain fog, headaches, fever and shortness of breath.
The symptoms “can range from slightly irritating to actually inappropriate,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Wednesday during an information session of the Covid-19 in the White House.
“We believe that the insight we gain from this research will also improve our knowledge of the basic biology of how people recover from infection, and our understanding of other chronic post-viral syndromes and autoimmune diseases,” the dr. Francis Collins, NIH director, said. in a statement Tuesday.
Congress previously allocated $ 1.15 billion to the NIH to study long-term executives. The money will be spent over four years. The research announced this week is the first in a series of such projects.
Researchers will “search large sources such as data sources and health symptoms for large databases, and they will study a number of biological samples,” Fauci said.
The research initiative also hopes to answer the questions about how many Covid-19 survivors may be affected, who may be the most vulnerable, as well as what may be the underlying cause for long-term symptoms.
Download the NBC News app for full coverage of coronavirus outbreakk
A study from Wuhan, China, published last month, found that Covid-19 symptoms can linger up to six months.
Of about 1,700 patients, 63 percent said they still had fatigue or muscle weakness six months later, and about a quarter reported having anxiety or depression, as well as trouble sleeping.
“We do not yet know the extent of the problem, but given the number of individuals of all ages who are or will be infected,” Collins wrote, “the impact on health can be very serious.”
Follow NBC HEALTH Twitter & Facebook.