Hackensack Meridian Health Researchers Publish Important COVID-19 Findings Throughout Pandemic

Physicians, nurses, scientists have published 260+ peer-reviewed papers - and list keeps growing

Hackensack Meridian Health researchers have published more than 261 publications on COVID-19, a growing literature contributing to virtually every facet of our knowledge about the virus and how to diagnose, treat, and manage it. 

The papers were authored by experts from the Hackensack Meridian Health Research Institute’s (HMHRI’s) diverse network of locations: the 17 hospitals across the network including the three academic centers at Hackensack University Medical Center, JFK University Medical Center, and Jersey Shore University Medical Center; the Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI); the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine; and numerous other locations. 

The HMH findings appeared in prestigious journals including: The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, BMJ, Lancet Microbe, The American Journal of Surgery, Pediatrics, Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Oncology, American Journal of Cardiology, Academic Medicine, and many others.

“Our network’s researchers really rose to the occasion when the health challenge of our time appeared with little warning,” said Ihor Sawczuk, M.D., FACS, Hackensack Meridian Health’s president of Academics, Research and Innovation, and also associate dean of Clinical Integration and professor and chair emeritus of Urology at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. “Our spirit of collaboration and innovation have provided incalculable benefit to patients in New Jersey - and beyond.” 

The publications span the gamut of the COVID-19 experience, including: clinical research on the acute and post-acute treatment of the SARS-CoV-2 virus; clinical trials and novel interventions; infection control; investigating the ins and outs of the new virus; the long-term effects of infection; and the best practices in continuing other care in a changed health landscape.

Physicians, nurses, scientists, and other experts often collaborated across Hackensack Meridian Health, and partnered with other institutions, to get the best findings possible. 

Among the highlights:  

• Investigating particular drugs, interventions, and therapies at different times in the pandemic.
  These results included different waves of trying new drugs and clinical trials to save patients’ lives. One of the most in-depth recently appeared in BMC Infectious Diseases, which provided a data-driven look into pneumonia cases in 2020’s first wave of the pandemic, showing that use of the important steroid methylprednisolone worked well in some ethnic groups - but not as much in others. 
• CDI’s detailed investigations into the epidemiology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its evolution.
  A series of papers document the CDI’s efforts in understanding what the virus mutates as it keeps circulating and evolving. These include a paper documenting the rise of advanced variants in a patient in New Jersey… almost a year before those variants became common. It also includes other publications showing the rise of multiple variants in the New York Metropolitan area, and another showing the protective dynamics of vaccination among health care workers. 
• Medical students contributing to a growing literature - in real-time. 
  The medical students at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine partnered with faculty and experts to provide updates on the exponentially-increasing online research early in the pandemic. The results were published in the leading journal Academic
• A series of papers getting to the “heart” of the matter.
  HMHRI experts in cardiology have taken an in-depth look at some of what’s going wrong in some COVID-19 patients’ hearts, from ventricle to ventricle, thereby pointing the way toward better future treatment. These findings were published in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the American
• How the virus may be affecting survivors’ nervous systems.
  HMHRI researchers looked at how patients recover from the virus, including a paper in the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation looking at a group of patients showing local weakness and focal peripheral neuropathies after COVID-19. The results raise significant questions regarding underlying pathophysiology and overall prognosis associated with COVID-19.
• A growing literature on treating cancer in the pandemic era.
  The HMH world-class oncologists continued to treat patients despite the difficulties presented by COVID-19 in the health care setting. One of the key publications was one in the Journal of Oncology suggesting that cancer patients are not more susceptible to fever-inducing COVID-19 than health care workers - and also that most infections were community-spread in the first wave of the pandemic. 
• The future health of the youngest among us, in this new era. 
  Ongoing investigations are underway to determine what effects this virus and its changes will have on the health of our children. One of the most recent papers is a large collaborative study in the journal Pediatrics showing that childrens’ BMIs are growing during the pandemic, thus sounding the alarm for rippling health concerns of the future. 

“Everyone at the HMHRI continues to push forward in their respective niche,” said Sawczuk. “This is how we make progress for all.”