A randomized trial tested common drugs for long COVID fatigue, given there are no FDA-approved treatments or validated disease-specific primary outcome measures.In the study, the addition of 12 weeks of famotidine-loratadine or colchicine, but not rivaroxaban, led to marginal reductions in fatigue over usual care with a long COVID specialist.After study drug cessation, however, differences at 24 weeks were no longer significant between groups.
An anti-inflammatory pill and the combination of a heartburn drug and an antihistamine marginally improved severe long COVID fatigue over usual care, and only in the short-term, according to an open-label randomized trial from the U.K.
Compared with usual care with a long COVID specialist alone, adding daily treatment with the common drugs (colchicine or famotidine-loratadine) led to statistically significant improvements in patient-reported Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS) scores over 12 weeks, but the differences were small and of marginal clinical significance:Colchicine: 1.49 points lower (P=0.041)Famotidine-loratadine: 1.48 points lower (P=0.038)
Furthermore, those differences were no longer significant 12 weeks after stopping the interventions, reported Amitava Banerjee, DPhil, of University College London, and colleagues of the STIMULATE-ICP consortium, in Lancet Infectious Diseases.
