At the initiative of Stichting Long COVID, a collaboration is being established between research teams from five UMCs and other research centers. The SLC Consortium includes four research projects on possible mechanisms of development of Long COVID. The researchers have drawn up a joint plan and will share knowledge, data and biomaterial to increase their impact. This will create a solid foundation for more research into Long COVID in the Netherlands. The studies will start this year and will be completed within 24 months.
Patients cannot (yet) register to participate in these studies.
The hundreds of thousands of people with Long COVID in the Netherlands still have no prospect of a treatment that works. For these patients, speed and future prospects are the most important. Some have been ill for more than three years. These patients suffer from serious and limiting complaints and have become partially or completely incapacitated for work. Their situation is now hopeless. The solution for these patients can come from biomedical research into the mechanisms of development of Long COVID. If the cause or causes are known, targeted effective treatments can be developed.
Long COVID is a complex disease, across multiple organ systems. That is why it is important that research is done from different angles. In collaboration. That is also important because there is limited money available for scientific research in the Netherlands. So there must be good coordination with each other about what is important to investigate first and who will do what, in line with everyone's expertise. It is also necessary to build on international knowledge and science.
