ERASE – long COVID

ERASE-LC is funded by a research grant from Gilead Sciences for people with long COVID, sponsored by the University of Derby and managed by the University of Plymouth’s Peninsula Clinical Trials Unit (PenCTU) . Professor Mark Faghy (Professor in Clinical Exercise Science) is the Chief Investigator and will be leading the research.

One in ten people experience symptoms in the weeks, months and even years following a COVID-19 infection. These symptoms affect people in different ways and there is evidence that they impact physical and mental well-being and cognitive function. These collections of symptoms are called long COVID. Currently, there are no treatments available to address these issues, but anti-viral medications have been suggested as being potentially effective.

Remdesivir is an anti-viral medication used to treat people admitted to hospital with COVID-19. We don’t know if this works to reduce the symptoms of long COVID and before we conduct a large study to investigate this we need to see if a smaller number of participants are able to tolerate the study processes and the drug. The information gathered from this study will be used to inform the design of a larger future trial, which will determine whether Remdesivir can be used as a treatment for long COVID.