Long COVID: Addiction drug shows promise in treating brain fog, fatigue
Global News
Researchers chasing long COVID cures are eager to learn whether the drug can offer similar benefits to millions suffering from pain, fatigue and brain fog months after infection.
Lauren Nichols, a 34-year-old logistics expert for the U.S. Department of Transportation in Boston, has been suffering from impaired thinking and focus, fatigue, seizures, headache and pain since her COVID-19 infection in the spring of 2020.
Last June, her doctor suggested low doses of naltrexone, a generic drug typically used to treat alcohol and opioid addiction.
After more than two years of living in “a thick, foggy cloud,” she said, “I can actually think clearly.”
Researchers chasing long COVID cures are eager to learn whether the drug can offer similar benefits to millions suffering from pain, fatigue and brain fog months after a coronavirus infection.
The drug has been used with some success to treat a similar complex, post-infectious syndrome marked by cognitive deficits and overwhelming fatigue called myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
Drawing on its use in ME/CFS and a handful of long COVID pilot studies, there are now at least four clinical trials planned to test naltrexone in hundreds of patients with long COVID, according to a Reuters review of Clinicaltrials.gov and interviews with 12 ME/CFS and long COVID researchers.
It is also on the short list of treatments to be tested in the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s $1 billion RECOVER Initiative, which aims to uncover underlying causes and find treatments for long COVID, advisers to the trial told Reuters.
Unlike treatments aimed at addressing specific symptoms caused by COVID damage to organs, such as the lungs, low-dose naltrexone (LDN) may reverse some of the underlying pathology driving symptoms, they said.
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