Paxlovid Fails to Quell Long Covid Symptoms in Sta
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No statistically significant symptom benefit observed
Study assessed 15-day regimen in placebo-controlled trial
A 15-day course of Pfizer Inc.’s antiviral Paxlovid didn’t provide significant relief for long Covid patients, researchers at Stanford University found.
Their trial didn’t find a statistically significant difference in the severity of six core symptoms both at 10 and 15 weeks post-treatment between the 102 patients administered the drug twice daily and 53 who were randomized to receive a placebo.
Stanford’s STOP-PASC study attracted interest from almost 800 potential participants. It’s the first randomized clinical trial to test whether a longer course of the Covid medication could alleviate prolonged symptoms including fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, and body aches by rooting out the lingering coronavirus remnants thought to underlie at least a subset of people with long Covid, also known as post-acute sequelae of Covid-19, or PASC.
Read more: Pfizer’s Paxlovid to Be Studied as Potential Long Covid Therapy
The debilitating condition affects millions of people worldwide, some of whom have been suffering for more than four years, leading to an urgent need for effective treatments.
“This trial’s results do not reject the hypothesis that viral persistence may lead to PASC but they will help inform further studies in this area,” Linda Deng, a clinical associate professor of medicine at Stanford, and colleagues wrote in the study, which was published Friday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
The study was funded by Pfizer and the pharmaceutical giant collaborated on the design and execution of the trial.
Longer treatment durations, dose variations, changes in timing, and patients with different long Covid symptoms should be investigated in larger studies, the researchers said. Since the condition is likely driven by multiple disease pathways, combination therapies including antivirals and immunomodulators are worth exploring, they added.
Paxlovid was approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2021 for people at high risk of severe complications from acute Covid. The pill, a combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, got full clearance from FDA last year to treat mild-to-moderate Covid in adults at risk of developing severe illness.
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On Bloomberg site.
Sure does remind of LL's NEWS score.
Iye yie yie......I tell ya