Long COVID Clinical Trials May Offer Shortcut to New Treatments

Dozens of clinical trials nationwide are already underway or starting soon, many of which are aided by $1.5 billion in funding from the National Institutes of Health to help identify new treatments for common symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, sleep disturbances, and a hard time breathing. But it may take years for these trials to prove which drugs, devices, and behavioral therapies are safe and effective. 

"We’re not in warp speed," says Kanecia Zimmerman, MD, a principal investigator at the Duke Clinical Research Institute who is overseeing long COVID trials for the NIH. Operation Warp Speed — the 2020-2021  federal effort to get COVID vaccines designed, tested, authorized and distributed — benefited from existing scientific knowledge about other coronaviruses and about vaccines in general. But there’s no similar foundation of scientific knowledge about long COVID. 

"We are in a place of not really knowing anything," Zimmerman says.

But some glimmers of hope are emerging. A Veterans Affairs study recently found the antiviral Paxlovid might help prevent long COVID. A small case study at Yale found the ADHD drug guanfacine may ease brain fog from long COVID. And preliminary results from an NIH-funded study suggest COVID vaccines might help children with a rare but serious inflammatory condition known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C). 

"We already know that Paxlovid reduces the risk of developing long COVID, but it would be a game changer if it can improve long COVID symptoms as well," says Surendra Barshikar, MD, an associate professor and medical director of the COVID Recover program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. 

Source: MEDspace