People who took a cheap one diabetes Drug after positive test COVID-19 had a 40 percent reduced risk of contracting long-term COVID, a US-based company learn said Friday.
The finding has been hailed as a potential “milestone” in the fight against the still poorly understood disease that causes the World Health Organization estimates affects 1 in 10 people who contract COVID-19.
The study said it was the first phase 3 randomized, placebo-controlled trial — considered the gold standard in research — to show that taking a drug could prevent long-term COVID-19.
A drug called was tested metforminwhich was originally developed from the French lilac flower and has been the most commonly used drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes worldwide for decades.
This means the drug is known to be safe, inexpensive, and widely available.
The study involved 1,126 overweight or obese people in the United States, half of whom received metformin and half received a placebo in the days after testing positive for COVID-19.
After 10 months, 35 of the participants taking metformin were diagnosed with long-term COVID disease compared with 58 in the placebo group, a 40 percent risk reduction.
The trial was conducted between December 2020 and January 2022, meaning it included the Omicron variant, which research has shown causes a lower rate of long-COVID than previous strains.
The team behind the COVID-OUT study had previously shown that metformin was reduced Coronavirus Patients’ risk of going to the emergency room, being admitted to the hospital, and dying has increased by more than 40 percent.
Carolyn Bramante, a researcher at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the new study, told AFP, “Our data show that metformin reduces the amount of….” SARS-CoV-2 virus” in patients.
The research was published in Lancet infectious diseases Diary.
‘Profound’
Jeremy Faust, a doctor at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the study, said in a linked comment that the results, if confirmed, will be “profound and potentially groundbreaking” for Long-COVID.
Frances Williams, professor of epidemiology at King’s College London, pointed out that 564 people had to take the drug “to prevent 23 hypothetical cases”.
“That means it would take 24 people to take metformin to prevent one case of Long-COVID,” she said, adding that that’s a lot of drugs to stop such a poorly understood disease.
The researchers cautioned that they had not tested metformin on people previously diagnosed with long-COVID, so the results did not mean it could be used to treat the condition.
The study also found that the antiparasitic drug ivermectinwhich has been the subject of misinformation throughout the year Pandemicas well as the antidepressant fluvoxamine did not prevent long-term COVID.
It is estimated that tens of millions of people suffer from long-COVID, in which numerous and sometimes debilitating symptoms persist or recur three months after infection and then drag on for years.
The most common symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, and a lack of mental clarity known as “brain fog.”
