The researcher said that the symptoms of chronic fatigue, which “I felt like I was hit by a truck”, disappeared after receiving oral treatment with two drugs.
Long COVID is an emerging health crisis, estimated to affect up to 30 percent of people infected with the coronavirus.  It can last for months, leaving many unable to work.  More than 200 symptoms have been linked to the condition, including pain, fatigue, brain fog, difficulty breathing and exhaustion after minimal amounts of physical activity.
Dr. Steven Dicks, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (USSF) and a specialist in HIV treatment research, said pharmaceutical companies tend to discount patient case studies.  But such cases have helped research into the treatment of HIV, and Deeks believes these Paxlovid cases could do the same for long-term COVID.
“This provides really strong evidence that we need to study antiviral therapy in this context as soon as possible,” Deeks said, adding that he had heard of another UCSF anecdotal case in which the symptoms of a long-term COVID patient disappeared after taking Paxlovid.
Scientists warn that these cases are “just for the sake of speculation” and not proof that the drug has caused relief from prolonged symptoms.  However, they support a leading theory that long-term COVID can be caused by a virus that remains in parts of the body for months, affecting the daily lives of patients long after the acute symptoms have disappeared.
The best data so far come from a study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is being examined by peers, in which researchers conducted autopsies on 44 people who died of COVID-19 or another cause but were infected with COVID- 19.  They found widespread infection throughout the body, including the brain, which can last for more than seven months after the onset of symptoms.
Paxlovid, which combines a new Pfizer pill with the old ritonavir antiviral, is currently approved for use in the early days of COVID infection to prevent serious illness in high-risk patients.
Pfizer Kit Longley spokesman said the company had not conducted long-term studies on COVID and did not comment on whether it would review them.
The pharmacist has two major clinical trials to see if Paxlovid can prevent the initial COVID infection.  This “can provide us with relevant data to help inform future studies,” Longley said.
Patients who have been suffering for months are becoming increasingly frustrated by the lack of medical research into their condition.
There are currently less than 20 clinical trials led by individual researchers or small pharmacists trying long-term COVID therapies, only a few of which are in the early stages, according to a Reuters review.
Diana Berent, founder of the COVID-19 Survivor Corps’s popular defense team, is pushing the Biden government to fund major long-term clinical trials for COVID-19.
“We should not do our research based on anecdotal reports,” he said.  “This is not good enough.”


‘BACK TO NORMAL’ 
In one case report, published as a preprint before peer review, a 47-year-old woman who was previously healthy and vaccinated became infected with COVID-19 in the summer of 2021. Most of her acute symptoms disappeared within 48 hours, but continued to have intense fatigue, brain fog, post-exercise exhaustion, insomnia, palpitations and body aches so intense that he could no longer work.
About six months after her initial infection, she became re-infected, most likely with COVID-19, and many of her acute symptoms also returned.  Her doctor prescribed a five-day course of Paxlovid.
On day 3, he noticed a rapid improvement in the long-term symptoms of COVID.  “It’s back to normal,” said Dr. Linda Geng, co-director of Stanford Health Care’s long-term COVID clinic and author of the case report published in Research Square.
In the second case, Lavanya Visvabharathy, 37, an immunologist working at Northwestern Medicine’s long-term COVID clinic, became infected in December 2021.
Her initial symptoms were mild, but she later developed chronic fatigue, headaches and sleep disturbances for four months after infection.  It also continued to be positive in rapid antigen tests, a sign of persistence of the virus
Visvabharathy was aware of the NIH study and the Stanford case and decided to try Paxlovid to see if it could clear up any virus.  By the end of the five-day course, her fatigue and insomnia had improved and her headaches were less frequent.  Two weeks after the end of the treatment, her fatigue had disappeared.  “It is 100 percent correct,” he said.
But proving that Paxlovid provides this kind of relief would require carefully monitored clinical trials, Visvabharathy said.
Dr. Igor Koralnik, who runs the Northwestern Medicine Clinic that focuses on the neurological effects of long-term COVID, noted the long list of widely used ritonavir-affected drugs and said Paxlovid “can not be used this way or that way.”
“Paxlovid is not a benign drug,” he said.  “Studies need to be done.”
(Report: Julie Steenhuysen. Edited by Michele Gershberg and Bill Berkrot)