Vanderbilt Institute for Medicine and Public Health

HERO-TOGETHER is an opportunity for people working in health care who receive a COVID-19 vaccine to help the public understand how people do after vaccination. The COVID-19 pandemic is a once-in-a-generation challenge that health care heroes everywhere have worked together to face. From working on the front lines to working behind the scenes, people in healthcare and public service have joined together with unprecedented focus to fight COVID-19.

Findings from a national study published Nov. 9 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) “do not support” the use of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of adult patients hospitalized with COVID-19, the report concludes. The Outcomes Related to COVID-19 treated with Hydroxychloroquine among In-patients with symptomatic Disease (ORCHID) study found that, when compared to inactive placebo, hydroxychloroquine did not significantly improve clinical outcomes of patients hospitalized for respiratory illness related to COVID-19.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been awarded a one-year, $34-million grant by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health, to conduct a nationwide study of “convalescent plasma” as a treatment for COVID-19. The randomized, controlled trial will test whether infusions of plasma, the liquid part of blood collected from COVID-19 survivors, can help other hospitalized patients with COVID-19. The plasma contains antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction and Survivorship Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center is following patients who have been hospitalized for COVID-19 over time to see if they develop long-term cognitive impairment, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These disabling features suffered by millions of ICU survivors are called Post-Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS).

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is evaluating razuprotafib, a drug being investigated for the treatment of glaucoma, in a new randomized, investigational trial for the prevention and treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in adult patients with moderate to severe COVID-19. “We urgently need to find effective treatments for COVID-19, especially for patients who develop severe lung injury from the virus,” said co-principal investigator Wesley Self, MD, an emergency medicine physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

The IVY Research Network has completed initial studies evaluating the epidemiology of COVID-19 in health care workers and patients.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators are leading a new study that examines the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, within households in Nashville. The study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) aims to understand how fast the infections spread within households and the factors that may be associated with that transmission. This is one of few longitudinal studies in the country that will examine coronavirus infections among close contacts.

The Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (VICTR) and RTI International, a non-profit clinical research organization based in North Carolina, have been named Administrative Coordinating Center (ACC) of a national effort to st

The Outcomes Related to COVID-19 Treated with Hydroxychloroquine among In-patients with Symptomatic Disease (ORCHID) trial stopped enrolling new patients based on the fourth scheduled interim analysis showing no evidence of benefit or harm.

People with cancer sickened by COVID-19 have a crude death rate of 13%, according to the largest series of data released thus far from a multinational perspective. The data on more than 900 patients, published May 28 in The Lancet and simultaneously presented at ASCO20 Virtual, also revealed cancer-specific factors associated with increased mortality.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are leading a nationwide study to determine the rate of novel coronavirus infection in U.S. children and their families. The study, named the HEROS (Human Epidemiology and Response to SARS-CoV-2) study and funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), aims to gain insight into how many children ages 1 to 21 have been infected, the percentage of those infected who develop symptoms of COVID-19 and any differences in immune responses to the virus between children and adults within the same household.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is playing a key role in a national effort to establish a registry of U.S. health care workers and test whether the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) will protect them, their patients and their families from COVID-19.