The experiment was conducted between December 2020 and January 2022, which means it included the “Omicron” variant that caused fewer long-term Covid-19 cases than previous variants, the study confirmed.
A cheap and widely available diabetes drug reduces by 40 percent the risk of long-term infection with Covid-19 in people affected by the Corona virus, according to a study published Friday.
The results of this study may constitute a milestone in the fight against the long-term Covid-19, which is still surrounded by ambiguity and affects, according to the World Health Organization, one in ten people with corona.
A phase 3 placebo-controlled trial tested a drug called metformin that, based on French lilacs, is the most widely used treatment in the world for people with type 2 diabetes.
Metformin is known to be safe, inexpensive and widely available.
The study, published in The Lancet Infection Diseases, included 1,126 overweight or obese people in the United States. While half of them received metformin, the other half were given a placebo during the days following results confirming their infection with Covid-19.
Ten months later, 35 people on metformin were diagnosed with long-term COVID-19, compared to 58 in the placebo group, representing a 40% reduction in the risk of long-term COVID-19.
The experiment was conducted between December 2020 and January 2022, which means it included the “Omicron” mutant that caused fewer long-term Covid-19 cases compared to previous mutants, the study confirmed.
The team that conducted the study previously found that metformin reduces the risk of transferring people with Covid to hospital emergencies, hospitalization, and death by more than 40 percent.
Speaking to Agence France-Presse, Caroline Bramante, a researcher at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the new study, said, “Our results show that metformin reduces the amount of SARS-CoV-2 virus” in patients.
Frances Williams, a professor of epidemiology at Kings College in London, confirmed that 564 people had to take this drug “to avoid recording 23 long-term Covid cases,” which means that “out of every 24 people who took metformin, one person avoided facing long-term Covid.” “.
The researchers pointed out that the drug was not tested on people with long-term Covid, and therefore it cannot be used as a treatment for these conditions, but only for prevention.
The study also found that the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, which has been misinformed during the pandemic, and the antidepressant fluvoxamine did not prevent long-term Covid infection.
