Posted to the preprint server medRxiv on Saturday, the research — which included more than 56,000 veterans with a positive coronavirus test — found that more than 9,000 patients given Paxlovid (a combination of the medications nirmatrelvir and ritonavir) within the first five days of their infection had a 26 percent lower risk of developing 10 of 12 different long COVID conditions. These lingering effects include heart disease, blood disorders, fatigue, liver disease, kidney disease, muscle pain, neurocognitive impairment (such as difficult thinking or “brain fog”), and shortness of breath. The mean age of study participants was 65 and the majority (88 percent) were male. The patients receiving Paxlovid had at least one risk factor of progression to severe acute COVID-19 illness, which included being over 60 years of age, having a body mass index (BMI) of more than 25 — defined as overweight by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), being a current smoker, or having cancer, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, chronic lung disease, diabetes, immune dysfunction, or hypertension. The researchers noted that the decreased risk of long COVID associated with Paxlovid treatment exists regardless of whether it was a participant’s first infection or a reinfection and regardless of whether the participant was unvaccinated, vaccinated, or boosted. “Paxlovid reduces the risk of severe COVID-19 in the acute phase, and now, we have evidence that it can help reduce the risk of long COVID,” said study leader Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, chief of research and development at the VA St. Louis Health Care System and clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, in a press release. “This treatment could be an important asset to address the serious issue of long COVID.” William Schaffner, MD, an infectious disease specialist and professor of preventive medicine and health policy at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, called the findings “substantial.” “If confirmed in other studies, this could lead to the use of Paxlovid in a wider group of patients,” said Dr. Schaffner. The Brookings Institute presented Census Bureau data from June to July of this year indicating that 16.3 million people (around 8 percent) of working-age Americans currently have long COVID. The CDC says that people with lingering COVID-19 effects may experience a wide range of conditions that last more than four weeks or even months or possibly a year or more after infection. “The totality of findings suggests that treatment with nirmatrelvir during the acute phase of COVID-19 reduces the risk of post-acute adverse health outcomes,” concluded the study authors.
