Kick-off of the new project on long COVID treatment

ReCover team during the project kick-off meeting in Oslo, January 2023

One of the most serious consequences of the COVID pandemic for many patients is so called long COVID – long-term sequelae affecting not only hospitalised patients, but also people after mild infection. This worrying trend manifests itself in numerous symptoms – like fever, shortness of breath, and cognitive symptoms with memory and concentration problems, so-called “brain-fog”. Long COVID is still an emerging clinical concept that is not fully characterized, including neurocognitive symptoms of unknown pathogenesis.

That’s why scientists from different parts of Norway teamed up in a new project ReCover – Interventions against long COVID in Norway. The project has received funding from KLINBEFORSK – Norwegian National program for clinical therapy research in the specialist health service, and is led by Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, with partners in Oslo, Tromsø and Trondheim.

The main goal of ReCover is to examine the effect of various forms of treatment and rehabilitation against long COVID.

The project had its kick-off meeting in Oslo Gardermoen in January 2023.

As Nina Langeland from Bergen COVID-19 research group and the ReCover coordinator points out: “If the project can help in protecting against fatigue, lung and memory problems, it will have great significance for society”.

Different project groups will look into various aspect of long COVID treatment.

The Bergen COVID-19 research group will focus on examining the impact of early antiviral treatment during acute illness on the development of long COVID symptoms among patients, in a large placebo controlled randomised clinical trial using the antiviral Paxlovid. The scientists from Oslo are going to look into markers of immunity and inflammation and to what extent they can predict the development of long COVID, whereas the Trondheim team will focus on the cognitive symptoms, how they develop and are expressed through changes in the brain. Finally, the Tromsø group will be in charge of the exercise-based long COVID rehabilitation program.

We look forward to new exciting findings from the project and sharing them on the Influenza Centre’s website!