Metformin is a diabetes medication that lowers blood sugar by improving the way the body handles the hormone insulin
Darren Lehane/Alamy
The diabetes drug metformin could prevent long covid, but whether it can also treat the condition in people who already have it is unclear.
Worldwide, an estimated 65 million people have some degree of lung covidwhich can lead to chronic fatigue, brain fog, heart and lung problems, and loss of taste and smell, among other things.
Because preventive medications and other treatment options are limited, Caroline Bramante at the University of Minnesota and her colleagues tested the potential of several therapies, including metformin, which is commonly used to control blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes and has been shown to limit the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in the laboratory.
The team looked at 1,126 people aged 30 to 85 who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the past three days. They were all overweight or obese, which can increase the risk of serious covid-19, but they did not require hospital care for the infection.
The participants were randomized to receive a range of possible treatments, including combinations of metformin, the antiparasitic drug ivermectin, the antidepressant fluvoxamine, or a placebo. At a 10-month follow-up, 6.3 percent of those taking metformin were diagnosed with lung covid, compared to 10.4 percent on placebo. suggesting the drug prevented 41 percent of long-term covid cases in the process. Neither ivermectin nor fluvoxamine reduced the risk.
While metformin may prevent long-term Covid in overweight or obese people who have mild SARS-CoV-2 infection, the drug’s potential in other groups, or as a long-term Covid treatment, is unclear.
Grace McComsey, who is leading the lengthy covid RECOVER study at the University Hospitals Health System in Cleveland, Ohio, says the latest research is encouraging. “A 40 percent reduction is quite impressive, especially considering that most of the study population was fully vaccinated and was already at a lower risk of getting long covid,” she says.
Metformin can act both as an anti-inflammatory and by reducing the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in an infected person’s body, she says. If it’s an antiviral drug, metformin “could potentially work for treating people with long-term covid,” says McComsey.
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