Three years after the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the “arsenal” to fight the protracted Covid remains empty.

Vaccination generally makes people less likely to develop the disease, but the only reliable way to avoid long-term Covid syndrome is to not get infected with the coronavirus at all, which is highly unlikely.

In particular, researchers still cannot even agree on its prevalence or the characteristics that define it.

What is clear is that millions of people in the United States alone and countless others around the world have been infected with Covid long ago.

As The Atlantic points out, industries are looking for advanced treatments for protracted Covid, not drugs that could prevent it from showing up.

Thus, it is clear that the ground for dealing with protracted Covid is still uneven, as researchers are currently trying to understand the triggers of the disease, the source of its symptoms, and the patient populations most at risk.

Antivirals

However, some scientists argue that antiviral drugs can help fight long-term Covid.

Part of the long-term cases of Covid may be due to the fact that “pieces” of the virus remain in the body, prompting the immune system to wage a “long war”. Thus, a drug that destroys the fetus more quickly may reduce the chance that some part of the invader will remain.

Paxlovide, which interferes with SARS-CoV-2’s ability to replicate itself inside cells, fits this pattern.

“The idea here is to nip it in the bud,” says Ziyad Al-Ali, a clinical epidemiologist and longtime Covid researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, who led the recent Paxlovid work.

At the same time, a large clinical trial of Paxlovid showed that it could prevent long-term Covid in newly infected people. Specifically, people who took the pill were found to be 26% less likely to report symptoms three months after they started than those who didn’t.

In addition, in another recent study, those who received Paxlovid were also 30% less likely to be hospitalized and 48% less likely to die.

However, the leader of the long-term Covid study, Al-Ali, believes the drug’s effectiveness in preventing the syndrome – if confirmed in another sample – would be “moderate, not overwhelming.”

Metformin

On the other hand, the case of adding metformin to the Covid toolkit remains murky. The drug isn’t ideal for a respiratory virus, and despite its widespread use by diabetics, its exact effects on the body remain unexplored, says Stacey Schultz-Cherry, a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

However, he points out that there are still plenty of reasons to believe it might be useful. Some studies have shown that metformin can block the ability to reproduce SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens.

The pill also appears to “revitalize” disease-fighting cells and keep inflammation at bay.

Studies have also shown that people who take metformin are less likely to get seriously ill with the flu.

Experts believe that metformin can prevent protracted Covid, but not acute, severe Covid.

However, more research is needed to be sure of the findings.

In any case, many questions remain. For example, it is not yet clear whether drugs work additively when combined with others, and it is not certain that they will work for everyone.

Drug discovery project – cures for years to come FROMovid is difficult given that 200 symptoms have been reported so far.

In any case, it is important to stop the protracted Covid while it is just starting. “We are not going to get rid of the protracted Covid in the near future. But the sooner we catch it in the beginning, the better,” he said. “The more we can catch the start, the better it will be for us,” added the immunologist from Yale University.

Source: Atlantic.