Researchers at the University of Oxford in the UK have been testing a possible treatment for long-lasting tiredness caused by COVID-19, known as long COVID fatigue.
They wanted to see if a medicine made by a US company called Axcella Therapeutics could help people with long COVID feel less tired.
They did a special type of test called a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial, which is the best way to test if a treatment works.
The researchers gave half of the 41 patients in the study the medicine, called AXA1125, which is a powder mixed with water that tastes like oranges, and the other half were given a placebo, which looked and tasted the same as the medicine but didn’t contain any active ingredients.
The patients didn’t know if they were taking the medicine or the placebo, and neither did the doctors running the study.
This was to make sure that any effects seen in the patients were definitely due to the medicine and not just because they expected to feel better.
The study lasted for four weeks and the patients took the medicine or the placebo twice a day.
All of the patients who started the study completed it, and none of them reported any serious side effects from either the medicine or the placebo.
The researchers found that the patients who were given the medicine reported feeling less tired than those who were given the placebo.
This was really positive news, and the researchers hope to do more work to find out why this happened.
They think it might be because the medicine helps to make energy in the body and reduce inflammation, which can cause tiredness.
The researchers also did some special scans of the patient’s muscles to see if the medicine was making any changes inside the body.
They found that there wasn’t much of a difference between the patients who took the medicine and those who took the placebo, but the patients who felt less tired also had improved muscle health and were able to walk further.
The researchers are still trying to find a treatment for all the different symptoms that people with long COVID have, and this study only looked at tiredness.
They also only tested the medicine on a small group of people who had signs that their muscles weren’t working as well as they should.
The researchers hope that future studies will show if the medicine can help even more people with long COVID feel better.
By the end of last year, over 500 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide.
Up to 10% of people who get COVID-19 are thought to have long COVID, which can cause a range of symptoms that last for weeks or even months after the virus has gone.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about new evidence on rare blood clots after COVID-19 vaccination, and how diets could help manage post-COVID syndrome.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies about nasal spray that lowers COVID-19 infection by 60%, and results showing zinc could help reduce COVID-19 infection risk.
The study was conducted by Lucy E.M. Finnigan et al and published in eClinicalMedicine.
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