Thanks to its antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, it accelerates the elimination of the Covid virus.
Persistent fatigue, brain fog, unexplained shortness of breath… Months after a Covid-19 infection, these symptoms can persist in patients who develop long Covid. This chronic disease affects 4% of the French population, or a little more than 2 million people. To date, no curative treatment exists. Doctors offer symptomatic treatment, leaving patients in an often discouraging therapeutic impasse. However, a drug that has already been on the market for a long time could prevent this Covid which does not pass.
Scientists sought to determine whether this treatment initiated in the first days of infection could prevent the appearance of long-term after-effects. To do this, they conducted a randomized placebo-controlled trial, then verified which patients had contracted long-term Covid via medical records. Various profiles of participants were included: people vaccinated or not, overweight, and even pregnant or breastfeeding women. The results showed a significant reduction in viral load in patients: -93% with the drug compared to -78% for the placebo. In the first case. the virus became undetectable in 3.3 days on average, compared to 5.6 days with a placebo.
According to the researchers, taking the drug reduced the risk of long-term Covid by 41%. This reduction even reached 63% in patients who started taking it within the first three days following the appearance of symptoms. An effectiveness attributed by scientists to “host-targeting immunometabolic actions” of the medicine. How does this molecule act against the Sars-Cov-2 virus? Thanks to its antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties which accelerate its elimination. This famous drug is metformin, a well-known oral antidiabetic drug.
Metformin is one of the oldest antidiabetic drugs on the market for the management of type 2 diabetes. Its main role is to reduce blood sugar levels by reducing the production of glucose by the liver and increasing the sensitivity of cells to insulin. This is a generic medicine, available only on prescription, which costs less than 3 euros in pharmacies for a box of 30 tablets and is reimbursed at 65% by Health Insurance according to the Public Medicines Database. “Initiating treatment with metformin from the acute phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection is safe and reduces the risk of developing long-term Covid”say the authors in the journal “Clinical Infectious Diseases”.
Metformin is well tolerated during short-term use and “does not require supervision”. Another major advantage: no drug interaction prevents its use with the treatments currently recommended against Covid-19. There is no clear directive yet in France regarding the prescription of metformin in the case of Covid-19 infection, but the authors of this study recommend its integration into care protocols.
