Two major Bay Area universities are launching new projects with the goal of helping people overcome the debilitating symptoms from long COVID.
Researchers at Stanford University are looking for 200 volunteers to participate in a first-of-its-kind clinical trial to see if Paxlovid, the anti-viral treatment that fights acute COVID-19, can help cure long COVID as well.
Stanford will study whether taking the drug can help with fatigue, brain fog, body aches and other long COVID symptoms.
Nearly 20% of people who get COVID end up suffering from at least one long COVID symptom.
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Some cases are so bad people aren't able to exercise or go to work.
Researchers at Stanford wonder if long COVID might actually be caused by the persistent presence of the COVID virus in the body and they want to see if they can address that with the Paxlovid anti-viral treatment.
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UCSF is also looking for volunteers who’ve had COVID within the past 30 days for a separate study called Recover, which is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. The mission is to find out more about how long COVID affects people and what can be done to stop it.
"There is still that possible question that lingers: how long will it take you to recover?" UCSF assistant professor of epidemiology Dr. Dan Kelly said. "Nobody wants to be sick for more than a month. Nobody wants to be sick for more than a couple days. Nobody wants to be sick, right? This long COVID thing is real and we see it all the time. We've seen some people from earlier in the pandemic that continue to suffer from it."
If you're interested in participating in the UCSF long COVID study, visit studies.recovercovid.org.
