An unexpected outbreak of the COVID-19 virus began to devastate the world population and the global economy in 2020. After more than four years, the COVID‐19 pandemic remains a global public health challenge as patients still report a variety of symptoms as a side effect of a COVID-19 infection. Among some of its most common clinical complications, neurological symptoms and diseases have been reported in up to a third of affected cases.
Available information can provide a picture of the rich spectrum of symptoms, signs, and diagnoses associated with COVID-19 infection. A registry can shed some light on the burden and general characteristics of neurological complications of the COVID-19 outbreak and the association of these complications with the demographic and clinical features of the affected individuals.
The start of ENERGY
In Spring 2020, the European Academy of Neurology, always present in challenging times, founded the EAN NEuro-covid ReGistrY (ENERGY), a unique initiative that has brought together more than 40 centres in 30 countries around the world to join forces against COVID-19. The vision of the ENERGY Core group – Prof. Elena Moro, Prof. Claudio Bassetti, Prof. Raimund Helbok, and the late Prof. Ettore Beghi – came to life with the help of principal investigators in November 2020 by publishing the article The European Academy of Neurology COVID-19 registry (ENERGY): an international instrument for surveillance of neurological complications in patients with COVID-19. Throughout the years, another four publications resulted from the group’s extensive work on analysing the epidemiological data derived from the ENERGY database.
Open Call for Project Submissions
To date, 96 principal investigators and project members have joined the study from 44 centres, mainly located in Europe, and have included data for more than 4,000 patients. Baseline and follow-up visits have reached the impressive number of more than 9,200, resulting in a registry which provides extensive data on new and persisting symptoms in COVID-19 patients. As the database has reached a point where extensive information can be provided on clinical data of patients with a COVID-19 infection presenting neurological complications, the EAN would like to invite anyone interested in conducting statistical analyses to fill out the project proposal form and submit it at covidregistry@ean.org. The proposals will be then evaluated by the EAN Head Office and the ENERGY Core Group.
EAN 2024 Congress in Helsinki
This year we had the pleasure of Prof. Raimund Helbok presenting the ENERGY project in the scientific theatre session at the EAN Congress 2024 in Helsinki, along with Prof. Gordana Kiteva-Trencevska, Dr Khachik Petrosyan and Dr George Vavougios who presented activities from their centres’ cohorts. The ENERGY Investigators also had the chance to meet during the annual hybrid meeting, where the main topic of discussion was the next statistical analyses. Dr Maurizio Leone, the leading scientist for the ENERGY statistical analysis reported on the next steps.
For more information, you can visit our website here and if you have questions, you can always reach out to us via covidregistry@ean.org.
