Lots of long COVID treatment leads, but few are proven

Work by professor of physiology Etheresia Pretorius at Stellenbosch University in South Africa supports the notion that these fragments of leftover viral antigen can indeed wreak havoc. Before the pandemic, Pretorius was investigating how bacteria that lurk in the bloodstream after an infection can set off blood-clotting cascades; she thinks the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has a similar effect ( 21 , 22 ). Pretorius and colleagues tested the idea of targeting the resulting microclots in long COVID patients directly, using an existing blood thinner regimen for atherosclerosis. In a small study still in preprint, they used the standard “triple therapy” anti-platelet drugs clopidogrel and aspirin along with anticoagulation drug Apixiban on 23 patients. The team found that all the participants returned to their pre-COVID levels of platelet activity and reported that their symptoms of exhaustion and brain fog had resolved. The result aligns with the hypothesis that microclots are depriving tissue, including the brain, of oxygen, according to the study authors ( 23 ).

 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213524119#:~:text=%E2%80%9CFamotidine%20improved%20resolution%20of%2014,reported%20in%20Gut%20(%2024%20).