The National Institutes of Health will follow up to 1,500 pregnant COVID-19 patients and their offspring for four years to study the potential long-term effects of the infection.
The follow-up study, which will enroll patients who had asymptomatic or symptomatic COVID-19 during pregnancy, will assess patients' symptoms periodically throughout the four-year period and evaluate their offspring for neurologic symptoms and cardiovascular conditions, according to a Nov. 2 news release.
The research team — led by Torri Metz, MD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City — will seek to determine what proportion of pregnant people with COVID-19 are at risk for long-term effects and whether illness severity affects the likelihood of developing long COVID-19.
It's part of the NIH's larger project to evaluate long COVID-19, known as the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery, or RECOVER, Initiative.