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Long Covid: Paxlovid could prevent many cases, study says

2022-11-09T11:15:23.540Z


Even after a mild course of Corona, some people still suffer from exhaustion and other symptoms months later. According to a study, the drug Paxlovid could prevent many cases.


Enlarge image

The drug Paxlovid consists of the active ingredients nirmatrelvir and ritonavir

Photo: TNS/ABACA / picture alliance / abaca

According to a new study, the drug Paxlovid, which is mainly taken to prevent severe corona courses, could also prevent cases of Long Covid.

Health data from the US Department of Veteran Affairs was used for the investigation – an agency that takes care of the interests of war veterans.

From over 67,000 people who tested positive, the authors selected those who had at least one risk factor for serious illness and were not treated in a clinic at the onset of the infection.

Within this group, more than 9,000 people received the Paxlovid drug nirmatrelvir within five days of the positive test - this was not the case with more than 47,000 people in the comparison group.

They all received no other antiviral drugs or antibodies for the first 30 days.

The drug Paxlovid uses a combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir.

It inhibits virus multiplication in the body and can be taken at home.

more on the subject

Hardly any prescription of Paxlovid: Why do German doctors refuse the virus stopper to so many patients? By Veronika Hackenbroch

Based on 12 selected symptoms that represent typical long-term symptoms of Covid-19, both groups were compared after 90 days.

It showed that those who received the drug had a significantly lower risk of long-Covid symptoms.

In ten out of twelve examined complaints, the participants who were not treated with nirmatrelvir performed worse - these included shortness of breath, exhaustion or cardiac arrhythmia.

People from this group also had a greater risk of dying or being admitted to a clinic during the observation period.

Lauterbach comments on Twitter

The study is a so-called preprint, i.e. a work that has not yet been reviewed by colleagues and initially published provisionally.

Nevertheless, the work has already received positive comments from several experts.

Even Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach commented on the short message service Twitter: »This new US study shows that the administration of Paxlovid after COVID infection reduces the risk of #LongCovid by 25%.

Applies to those who have been vaccinated, those who have not been vaccinated and those who have been boosted.” Christian Karagiannidis, President of the German Society for Internal Intensive Care Medicine and Emergency Medicine (Divi), also shared the study on the social medium and described the data as very reliable.

The results also raise the question of whether prescribing practice for the drug is optimal or whether, in theory, a larger group of Covid-infected people could benefit from the treatment.

However, there are – in addition to the lack of expert assessment to date – also a number of factors that limit the significance of the study.

Since this is health data that was analyzed and compared only after the fact, it is difficult to establish a clear causal relationship between taking the drug and the better results.

Confounding factors, i.e. unintended differences between the two groups, can falsify the results in so-called retrospective studies.

In addition, the participants were veterans of the US Army, i.e. mostly older men.

The study cannot answer whether younger people or seniors without known risk factors also benefit from treatment with Paxlovid.

According to the WHO, more than 17 million people in Europe were affected by long-Covid symptoms in the first two years of the pandemic.

These include fatigue, coughing, shortness of breath, loss of taste and smell, and depression.

They usually appear within the first three months after infection and last at least two months.

If the symptoms last longer than 12 weeks, it is usually referred to as Post Covid.

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Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2022-11-09

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