Ohio State University researchers will form a dedicated center to study the long-term effects of COVID-19, thanks to a $10 million federal grant.
The grant from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health will fund the Center for Serological Testing to Improve Outcomes from Pandemic COVID-19, or the Center to STOP-COVID.
Researchers across several departments, including the Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine, will study virus transmission, exposure risks, immune responses and more.
"As a center grant, it is one of the largest grants that College of Medicine has recieved," says Ann Scheck McAlearney, a professor of family and community medicine at Ohio State. "It's also unusual in the sense that there are four co-principal investigators."
The center is going to conduct a long-term study of first responders and their families.
"That particular group we will be recruiting and studying with blood tests, and salivia sampling and looking at how they respond to the virus, transmission over time, if they get sick, who else gets sick?" McAlearney says.
Researchers plan to follow nearly 2,000 participants over a five-year period. They will begin recruiting participants within the next month.
