UK LLC - COVID-19: Towards better definition, prediction and recovery from long-COVID (CONVALESENCE)

Summary

[The NIHR BioResource contributes to a major national study of the long-term impacts of COVID-19, through the UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration.]

The UK’s chief scientific and medical advisors have commissioned a new programme of research into COVID-19. Part of this programme is designed to use the data from longitudinal studies to help answer certain research questions. This project is called the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing National Core Study. As part of the researchers leading this programme have also secured specific funding to research a collection of symptoms and health and wellbeing outcomes that are known collectively as ‘Long-COVID”. To do this, we will use the UK LLC as a Trusted Research Environment which brings together de-personalised longitudinal study data with participants de-personalised linked electronic health care and administrative and environmental records. All data will be used within the UK LLC environment and only anonymous research findings will be allowed to leave the environment, Contributing studies in the UK LLC will provide data they have collected during the pandemic (for example, C-19 infections, long-COVID symptoms) and this will be used with health and socioeconomic information collected in the years before the pandemic. We will use this information to answer a variety of questions relating to long-COVID such as:

•What is long-COVID and how is it defined?

•Why have I got long-COVID?

•What effects will long-COVID have on my health, ability to work and family? What are my chances of recovery?

•How will this research ensure I am getting the right treatment and support for long-COVID?

Patients, members of the public overseeing electronic health record research, and study members have been involved in shaping the research questions, and will be consulted for the duration of the project. In addition, people with long-COVID and their families, from the studies, will be involved in shaping the diagnostic tools for long-COVID, and aiding our understanding of determinants of recovery, and responses to therapy. All our research is being conducted with the aim of improving the public good and is not for profit.