Could Paxlovid help treat long COVID? Here’s what we know
Global News
Reports of two patients who found relief from long COVID after taking Pfizer's antiviral Paxlovid provide evidence for clinical trials to help those suffering, experts say.
Reports of two patients who found relief from long COVID after taking Pfizer Inc’s antiviral Paxlovid, including a researcher who tested it on herself, provide intriguing evidence for clinical trials to help those suffering from the debilitating condition, experts and advocates say.
The researcher said her chronic fatigue symptoms, which “felt like a truck hit me,” are gone after taking the two-drug oral therapy. Long COVID is a looming health crisis, estimated to affect up to 30 per cent of people infected with the coronavirus. It can last for months, leaving many unable to work. More than 200 symptoms have been associated with the condition, including pain, fatigue, brain fog, breathing difficulty and exhaustion after minimal amounts of physical activity.
Dr. Steven Deeks, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (USSF), and an expert in HIV cure research, said drug companies tend to discount single-patient case studies. But such instances have helped drive HIV cure research, and Deeks thinks these Paxlovid cases could do the same for long COVID.
“This provides really strong evidence that we need to be studying antiviral therapy in this context as soon as possible,” said Deeks, adding that he has heard of yet another anecdotal case at UCSF in which a long COVID patient’s symptoms cleared after taking Paxlovid.
Scientists caution that these cases are “hypothesis-generating only” and not proof that the drug caused relief of lingering symptoms. But they lend support to a leading theory that long COVID may be caused by the virus persisting in parts of the body for months, affecting patients’ daily lives long after acute symptoms disappear.
The best evidence so far comes from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study, currently under peer review, in which researchers conducted autopsies in 44 people who died of COVID-19 or another cause but were infected with COVID. They found widespread infection throughout the body, including in the brain, that can last more than seven months beyond the onset of symptoms.
Paxlovid, which combines a new Pfizer pill with the old antiviral ritonavir, is currently authorized for use in the first days of a COVID infection to prevent severe disease in high-risk patients.
Pfizer spokesman Kit Longley said the company does not have any long COVID studies underway and did not comment on whether it would consider them.
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