Profiling the response to exercise in Long Covid (PREPP-19)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Profiling the response to exercise in Long COVID patients to inform novel rehabilitation guidelines
IRAS ID
313936
Contact name
Mark Faghy
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Derby
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 28 days
Research summary
The value of clinical cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) within healthcare settings has been established in the last decad. CPET methods remain highly relevant in the COVID-19 endemic phase and should be used to assess those recovering from COVID-19 infection. This diagnostic tool could play an integral role in disease prognostication and evaluate the integrative response to incremental exercise. Date from such assessments can enable practitioners to characterise cardio-respiratory fitness and identify reasons for physical impairment or abnormal cardio-respiratory function. More than 50% of patients admitted to hospital will experience cardiorespiratory issues and significant morbidity during their recovery and will require significant rehabilitative support. In this context, measurements obtained from an assessment of cardio-respiratory responses to physiological stress could provide insight regarding the integrity of the pulmonary-vascular interface and characterisation of any impairment or abnormal cardio-respiratory function. Current approaches to rehabilitation are being developed on existing knowledge from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) related illness. These provide important insight but do not provide insight into the novel challenges provided by COVID-19.
We bring together three clinical and academic research centres from around the world that collaborate as part of the Healthy Living for Pandemic Event Protection international network to conduct a minimum of 150 2-day CPET tests in patients that hospitalised with COVID-19. Patients will be engaged in testing in the UK (led by Faghy from the Human Science Research Centre, Derby and Maden-Wilkinson from the Research and Innovation for post-COVID-19 Rehabilitation centre, Sheffield), USA (led by Arena and Ozemek at the University of Illinois at Chicago) and India (led by Veluswamy and Babu at the Ramaiah Medical College, Bangalore). All tests will be conducted following standardised procedures documented by the American College of Sports Medicine.
REC name
London - Surrey Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/LO/0247
Date of REC Opinion
26 Oct 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion