Bookstaver assembles team to follow virus treatments
Not long after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, P. Brandon Bookstaver recognized that not only did researchers need to find a treatment for patients affected by the novel coronavirus, they would also need to learn as much as possible about the treatment’s effectiveness and the long-term impact of the disease.
Bookstaver, associate professor at the University of South Carolina College of Pharmacy, along with co-principal investigator Dr. Sharon Weissman of the School of Medicine Columbia, and a team of co-investigators from the College of Pharmacy, School of Medicine and other health care facilitators throughout South Carolina, established the South Carolina COVID-19 Treatment Outcomes Registry.
The registry objectives include determining COVID-19 treatment patterns among South Carolina hospitals, assessing short-term safety and effectiveness outcomes among the pharmacologic treatment approaches, and assessing long-term safety and effectiveness outcomes in patients following their hospitalizations. Clinicians, regulatory agencies and research scholars will benefit from the invaluable data.
As researchers continue to work on treatments, which are still considered experimental, as well as a potential vaccine, many unknowns remain about COVID-19 that Bookstaver hopes the registry can help to answer.
“Does it affect diabetes after six months? Does it increase your stroke risk?” he says.
Once it’s created, it will be a living registry that we hope will provide information about the impact of the disease 30 to 40 years down the road ...
P. Brandon Bookstaver, Pharm.D. Associate Professor
His goal for the registry is to follow COVID-19 patients long-term to see if there are any predictors of what may have happened during their infection, what treatment they may or may not have received, and how that contributes to both short- and long-term outcomes.
“Once it’s created, it will be a living registry that we hope will provide information about the impact of the disease 30 to 40 years down the road,” he says. “And we will make it available for other researchers and clinicians.”
The registry has received some seed funding through the UofSC Office of the Vice President for Research and from a private family foundation located in the upstate of South Carolina. Researchers are seeking additional funding for this project that will impact the COVID-19 research base in South Carolina for years to come.
If you would like to support the registry, please contact Terry Dixon