The National Institutes of Health (NIH), US will support a four-year follow-up study on the potential long-term effects of COVID-19 on women infected with SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy. The study will also follow their offspring for any potential long-term effects.

The effort is part of NIH’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative, which aims to understand why some individuals who have had COVID-19 don’t fully recover or develop symptoms after recovery.

Known as post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), or more commonly as Long COVID, these conditions affect all ages. Long-term effects include fatigue, shortness of breath, difficulty concentrating, sleep disorders, fevers, anxiety and depression.

The current study will enroll some participants from an earlier study by the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units (MFMU) Network, a 36-site research collaboration supported by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

Researchers hope the study findings will inform efforts to reduce the risk of Long COVID after pregnancy and to treat its symptoms.