Treating Long COVID

"Research into long COVID — which is also known as post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, and is usually defined as COVID-19 symptoms that last longer than three months — has lagged behind studies of the acute phase of infection. People who experience long COVID live with a wide array of symptoms, ranging from mild to severely debilitating. Researchers have proposed a variety of causes for the condition — from lingering viral reservoirs, to autoimmunity, to tiny blood clots. Many think that a mix of these factors is to blame. “It took a while to get going on any serious mechanistic long-COVID research,” says immunologist Danny Altmann at Imperial College London. “It’s hard to piece the big picture together.”

Heidi Ledford, NATURE News

Researchers are studying the long-term effects of treatments given to people hospitalized with COVID-19.  Credit: Diego Vara/Reuters'

An informed estimate puts the number of people infected with  COVID-19, suffering symptoms long after the infection period, a phenomenon named 'Long COVID', at up to 30 percent. A miserable condition that can last for months. Many people with that condition are left in a state that makes them incapable of returning to work. Over 200 symptoms are associated with Long COVID, inclusive of pain, fatigue, brain fog, difficulty breathing, and minimal activity causing exhaustion.

Reports have emerged that give new hope that a potential control mechanism is in view capable of reducing Long COVID effects, going so far as to dispel them entirely. Two patients were found to have been given relief from Long COVID, having taken Pfizer's antiviral Paxlovid pill. One of those individuals was herself a researcher, testing the drug off-label on herself, for this was not what Paxlovid was formulated to do.

The Pfizer pill Paxlovid is a combination between an old antiviral, ritonavir, and a new Pfizer formula. Its use was meant for patients very recently diagnosed with COVID and immediately prescribed the pill meant to prevent severe disease occurring from a COVID infection in high-risk patients. Pfizer conducted no studies on Long COVID that would link it to their new medication.

 

A patient suffering from Long COVID is examined in the post-coronavirus disease (COVID-19) clinic of Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, Israel, February 21, 2022. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

 

The researcher let it be known that her chronic fatigue symptoms, part of her Long COVID condition, which "felt like a truck hit me" had disappeared since she took the two-drug oral therapy. Scientific researchers urge caution in the situation they speak of as "hypothesis-generating only" with no proof existing that the drug actually gave relief of symptoms associated with Long COVID.

They do, however, support a theory that parts of the body may have seen ongoing infection by the virus in a persistence that causes Long COVID -- affecting the daily lives of patients long after the infection's original acute symptoms dissipate. 

A National Institutes of Health study under peer review saw researchers conducting autopsies on 44 people whom COVID-19 killed, or another compromising illness did, while they had also been infected with the virus -- finding widespread infection throughout the body including in the brain. The conclusion being that the infection is capable of enduring over seven months and beyond, long after the onset of symptoms.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) treatment pill Paxlovid is seen in a box, at Misericordia hospital in Grosseto, Italy, February 8, 2022. REUTERS/Jennifer Lorenzini