Cheap and Widely Available Diabetes Drug Reduces Long-term Covid-19 Risk by 40%: Study

A cheap and widely available diabetes drug reduces the risk of long-term infections with “Covid-19” by 40%, according to a study published Friday.

The results of this study may constitute a milestone in the fight against the long-term “Covid-19”, which is still surrounded by ambiguity and affects, according to the World Health Organization, one in 10 people infected with corona.

And I tested a drug called “Metformin”, which is the most widely used treatment in the world for people with type 2 diabetes.

Metformin is known to be safe, inexpensive and widely available.

The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, included 1,126 overweight or obese people in the United States. And while half of them received “metformin”, the other half was given a placebo during the days that followed the results confirming their infection with “Covid-19”.

After 10 months, 35 people who took metformin were diagnosed with long-term Covid, compared to 58 people in the placebo group, which represents a 40% decrease in the risk of facing a long-term infection with “Covid-19”.

The experiment was conducted between December 2020 and January 2022, which means it included the “Omicron” mutant that caused fewer long-term Covid-19 cases than previous mutants, the study confirmed.

The team that conducted the study previously found that metformin reduces the risk of transferring people with Covid to hospital emergencies, hospitalization, and death by more than 40%.

Reducing the amount of SARS-CoV-2 virus

Speaking to Agence France-Presse, Caroline Bramante, a researcher at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the new study, said that the results “show that metformin reduces the amount of SARS-Cove-2 virus” in patients.

Frances Williams, a professor of epidemiology at Kings College in London, confirmed that 564 people had to take this drug “to avoid recording 23 long-term Covid cases,” which means that “out of every 24 people who took metformin, one person avoided facing long-term Covid.” “.

The researchers pointed out that the drug was not tested on people with long-term Covid, and therefore it cannot be used as a treatment for these conditions, but only for prevention.

The study also concluded that the anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin, which was affected by misinformation during the pandemic, and the antidepressant Fluvoxamine, did not prevent long-term Covid infection.