Chris Simmons, MD, PhD, is an associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics. He is also a co-director of our combined MD/PhD program, with a focus on career advising. As a physician-scientist at an academic medical institution, Dr. Simmons regularly sees patients, mentors medical students, and engages in research.
He is the principal investigator (PI) on the following project: COVID-19: RECOVER-SLEEP: A Platform Protocol for Evaluation of Interventions for Sleep Disturbances in Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection (PASC).
This clinical trial explores the conditions of patients who, after being infected with COVID-19, developed excessive daytime sleepiness or new difficulties falling or staying asleep. It aims to improve a participant’s circadian rhythm using a combination of medications that promote alertness or promote sleep, as well as study the impact of light therapy.
Dr. Simmons shares that he hopes to enroll 10-20 patients over the next year and follow them for two years. Currently, the trial is still in its recruitment phase, with a registry of eligible patients being screened for participation. Patients with untreated sleep apnea, who have to perform shift work, or who don’t routinely try to get at least six hours of sleep nightly will be excluded.
What makes this trial unique, he shared, is that the patients are all rural and medically underserved, a population often excluded from clinical trials. According to Dr. Simmons, this is one of several upcoming trials aimed at improving certain long COVID symptoms.
His overarching goal with this research is to help improve fatigue and sleep disturbance symptoms that patients experience following COVID-19 diagnoses, and, ultimately, to disseminate those results to improve the lives of other patients in the Commonwealth, and across the U.S.
This study is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative and one of several clinical trials contributing to the larger discourse surrounding long COVID and its symptoms.