Imagine catching a cold and having a runny nose that lasts for several weeks, or even months. That sounds terrible, right?
This is similar to what some people experience after they recover from the COVID-19 virus. They continue to have symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, and difficulty breathing, a condition often called “long COVID.”
Right now, scientists are unsure how to treat or prevent long COVID.
A Potential Solution: Metformin
Recently, scientists published a study in a famous scientific journal, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, about a medicine that might help prevent long COVID.
It’s called metformin, and it’s a common and safe medicine usually used to treat diabetes.
These scientists ran a test called a randomized controlled trial, which is a special type of experiment that helps us understand if a treatment works.
This was the first trial of its kind to show that a medicine could help prevent long COVID in people who caught the virus but weren’t sick enough to go to the hospital.
In the trial, people who had a high risk of getting severe COVID-19, such as being overweight or older than 30, were given either metformin or a fake pill (called a placebo) as soon as they tested positive for the virus.
The results were encouraging. They found that metformin could prevent long COVID in about 40% of the cases.
Only about 6% of the people who took metformin got long COVID, compared to over 10% who took the fake pill.
But Wait, There’s More!
Interestingly, the scientists also found that metformin could help prevent severe COVID-19.
In their study, they found that metformin could stop over 40% of visits to the emergency room, hospital stays, and deaths caused by COVID-19 within two weeks of starting the treatment.
Another cool thing the scientists noticed was that metformin could stop the COVID-19 virus from copying itself in a lab. This might be why metformin can help prevent both severe COVID-19 and long COVID.
Limitations and Next Steps
Of course, this study isn’t perfect. For example, the trial didn’t include people who were underweight or younger than 30, so we don’t know if metformin would help these people too.
Another limitation is that the definition of long COVID is still changing as we learn more about it. In this trial, they decided that a person had long COVID if a doctor diagnosed them with it.
They also followed the patients for a long time to see if they developed long COVID. This might help address some of the uncertainty around what counts as long COVID.
In a comment linked to the study, Dr. Jeremy Faust, who wasn’t part of the research, said that the findings could be very important if they’re confirmed by more studies.
He said that this was the first strong evidence from a randomized controlled trial showing that a medical intervention – in this case, metformin – could reduce the number of long COVID cases.
This could be a game-changer in our fight against long COVID!
If you care about COVID, please read studies about Vitamin D deficiency linked to severe COVID-19, and how diets could help manage post-COVID syndrome.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies about new evidence on rare blood clots after COVID-19 vaccination, and results showing zinc could help reduce COVID-19 infection risk.
The study was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
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