Forty percent fewer people who tested positive for Covid showed prolonged Covid symptoms over 10 months, after two weeks of treatment with a common diabetes drug, metformin, at the time of infection, compared to those who only A new study published on Friday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases found that they were given a placebo.
Long-term symptoms such as fatigue or shortness of breath that some people experience even after 12 or more weeks of infection with SARS-CoV-2 are referred to as long-lasting Covid – an emerging chronic disease affecting millions of people worldwide. There are currently no proven treatments or ways to prevent long-term Covid, other than reducing the risk of infection in the first place.
The new study, which included 1,126 overweight (body mass index of 25 or more) and obese people (body mass index of 30 or more), found that 6.3 percent of participants who took metformin within three days of testing positive for SARS -CoV- 2, reported a long diagnosis of Covid within 10 months, compared to 10.4 percent of those receiving placebo. The trial was held from December 2020 to January 2022.
Metformin is used to control blood sugar in people with lifestyle-related type 2 diabetes that occurs over the years.
This is the first published randomized control trial to suggest that diabetes drugs taken during the acute phase of Covid may be able to reduce the risk of long-term symptoms.
“Long Covid is a major public health emergency that can have lasting physical health, mental health and economic impacts, especially for socio-economically marginalized groups,” study author Dr. Carolyn Bramante from the University of Minnesota Medical School, USA, said in a statement.
She added: “There is an urgent need to find potential treatments and ways to prevent this disease. Our study showed that metformin, a drug that is safe, cheap and widely available, substantially reduces the risk of a diagnosis of long-term Covid disease when taken at the time of first infection with the coronavirus.
However, the author cautioned that the study does not indicate whether metformin would be effective as a treatment for those who have already had Covid for a long time.
