Despite Previous Data, Paxlovid May Be Useful for Long Covid After All

Posted January 8, 2025

Despite Previous Data, Paxlovid May Be Useful for Long Covid After All

The antiviral pill Paxlovid might help some patients who are suffering from long COVID.

A five-day course of Paxlovid is known to help limit symptoms and shorten illness in patients during an initial bout of COVID-19, researchers said in a study published Jan. 6 in the journal Nature Communications Medicine..

However, evidence has been mixed whether a longer course of the antiviral could help alleviate symptoms that can last weeks or months as long COVID.

In a small case series, five out of 13 long COVID patients given Paxlovid experienced sustained improvements in their symptoms, University of California-San Francisco researchers report.

These findings counter clinical trial results published in June which found that Paxlovid was safe to take but did not lessen long COVID symptoms, the UCSF researchers noted.

Those earlier trial results, based on data from 155 patients, appeared in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

“We are about five years into the pandemic, and yet there are not yet any federally-approved treatments for long Covid,” Alison Cohen, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF and lead researcher of the new study, said in a news release from the college.

“This is not a silver bullet, but it may help a lot of people in a meaningful way,” Cohen said.

For the study, doctors prescribed up to 15 days of Paxlovid for a baker’s dozen patients with long COVID, and tracked the results.

Success stories included a 56-year-old man who had improvements in symptoms after more than two years of fatigue, headaches, photosensitivity, brain fog, elevated heart rate and joint pain.

In addition, a 51-year-old man who regularly experienced “crashes” related to fatigue, headaches, brain fog, and nerve pain in the hands and feet, found that his symptoms all resolved following 15 days on Paxlovid.

However, a 45-year-old woman with fatigue, breathing difficulties, chest pain, weight loss and migraines found that a five-day course of Paxlovid gave her a three-day reprieve from her symptoms, but a 15-day course did nothing to help her symptoms.

Long COVID has proven difficult both to treat and to pin down, researchers said. More than 200 symptoms have been ascribed to the condition, due to COVID-19’s effects on many different systems and organs within the body.

“If we’ve learned one thing over the last four years, it’s that long Covid is complex, and figuring out why some people benefit so remarkably from antiviral treatment while others don’t is one of the most important questions for the field,” investigator Dr. Michael Peluso, an infectious disease researcher in the UCSF School of Medicine, said in a news release.

“We are going to need to embrace that complexity to get answers for the millions of people suffering from this condition,” Peluso added.

More information

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about long COVID.

SOURCE: University of California-San Francisco, news release, Jan. 6, 2025