August 11, 2022 – Millions of people are still living with effects of long COVID, even over two years into the pandemic. Why is there no treatment for these symptoms? According to a report from Nature, it’s a complicated condition to treat. With no proven treatment in place, many physicians and people with the condition have been forced to “play whack-a-mole with its many symptoms.”
Discussing the lack of viable and verifiable treatment options for patients, Danny Altman, an immunologist at Imperial College London said, “If you look at long COVID at this moment in time, I’d paint a slightly ‘Wild West’ and desperate picture really.”
Part of the problem about long COVID is that researchers are still trying to understand the root cause, or causes, of the condition. Nature reports that there are three leading hypotheses:
- The virus lingers in some people’s bodies, stimulating a reaction from the immune system that causes symptoms.
- Antibodies generated by the infection mistakenly attack the body’s own proteins.
- The virus may cause tiny blood clots that block the flow of oxygen to the body’s tissues.
Due to that uncertainty, physicians are having to create a patchwork of care that might respond to these symptoms. All the same, science is closing in on the pathology of long COVID, and there could even be trials for drugs designed to target the remaining fragments of the coronavirus.
Currently, there are over 25 clinical trials in the process of mapping out potential therapies and treatments for long COVID. “I’m still optimistic,” Altmann says. “The right stuff is going on, and there’s a fair amount of funding out there. Something is going to give.”