With new flurry of clinical trials, NIH finally seeks treatments for Long Covid

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) yesterday announced new clinical trials to test a diverse array of treatment strategies —from an intravenous immune drug to light therapy and a dietary supplement—in people with Long Covid, the disabling syndrome that can follow infection with the pandemic coronavirus. The focus is on mitigating some of the most common and debilitating symptoms including brain fog and sleep troubles. Most of the trials will include 100 to 300 people with Long Covid and will start to enroll this year, officials said. One, a multiweek study of the antiviral Paxlovid, has started to sign up participants—it was announced last year but subsequently reduced in size and redesigned to give people a longer course of the drug. The trials are part of NIH’s RECOVER initiative, which received more than $1 billion in funding from Congress in December 2020 and launched in early 2021 . Since then, it has frequently drawn criticism for moving too slowly and not helping Long Covid patients in desperate need of effective care. RECOVER initially focused on defining the postinfection syndrome in part to help quantify the problem and identify risk factors, though RECOVER’s leaders acknowledged yesterday at a press briefing that they still can’t say how many people are affected in the United States Although patient advocates and researchers expressed relief at the long-awaited list of trials, they also lamented some ...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news