Pfizer’s antiviral drug may have potential as long COVID treatment

Scientists and doctors are beginning to eye Paxlovid, the antiviral medicine developed by Pfizer to protect vulnerable people from severe disease, as a potential treatment for lingering COVID-19 symptoms after single patients report that the medicine has helped to reduce their symptoms.

Long COVID affects as many as one in five people infected by the virus, according to a recent report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The US Food and Drug Administration granted the drug emergency use authorization in December last year to prevent severe disease in high-risk patients.

“We need to be studying antiviral therapy [for the treatment of long COVID] as soon as possible,” said HIV expert Dr Steven Deeks, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He told Health Policy Watch that single-patient case studies have helped drive HIV cure research and Deeks believes that the same could prove true for long COVID.

In May, researchers from Deeks’ university published a report on the Research Square preprint platform of three vaccinated individuals in their 40s who developed long COVID. Two of them were treated with Paxlovid and reported that their symptoms substantially improved.

“While single anecdotes must be interpreted with caution, these cases emphasize the urgent need for carefully designed studies to assess the impact of antiviral therapy beyond the acute window,” the researchers wrote in their report.

Read the full story at Health Policy Watch.