Pain Mechanisms in Post-COVID syndrome
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Pain Mechanisms in Post-COVID syndrome
IRAS ID
331898
Contact name
Karen Jennings-Wilding
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Liverpool
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 17 days
Research summary
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious respiratory disease caused by a virus. As of the 25th of January 2023, 24.3 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported in the UK. Most people that are infected with COVID-19 will fully recover in a few weeks, but around 10% of people who contract the virus still experience symptoms months or even years later – these symptoms include fatigue, muscle pain, and shortness of breath. This condition is known as Post-COVID Syndrome (PCS).
The symptoms of PCS are very similar to fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), a widespread chronic pain condition studied in depth by our group at the Pain Research Institute. A recent study performed by our group demonstrated that FMS symptoms could be passively transferred from humans to mice by injecting antibodies taken from patient blood samples into the mice. These results suggest the FMS has an autoimmune basis. As PCS and FMS share so many symptoms, we wanted to investigate if these same results would be seen using post-COVID syndrome patient samples.
We will identify four groups of patients:
1. PCS patients with severe pain and fatigue
2. PCS patients with severe fatigue but no pain
3. PCS patients with severe dysautonomia (nervous system dysfunction)
4. Patients who were infected with COVID-19 but did not develop PCS (as a control group)
In addition to taking a blood sample for passive transfer experiments, participant’s will complete several questionnaires, sensory nerve fibre function will be assessed through quantitative sensory testing, small fibre neuropathy will be assessed through skin biopsies and corneal confocal microscopy, and nervous system functioning will be measured by cardiac autonomic testing. This battery of tests will allow us to characterise pain in individuals with post-COVID syndrome and explore the mechanisms responsible for pain, fatigue and dysautonomia.REC name
Wales REC 1
REC reference
23/WA/0279
Date of REC Opinion
8 Nov 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion