Health

Common, inexpensive diabetes drug could cut long COVID risk, study finds

Published

1 year ago

June 10, 2023

A well-known, inexpensive diabetes drug appears to cut the risk of developing long COVID, hopeful-but-early new research suggests.

The study, published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, found outpatient treatment with the drug metformin — a common treatment for Type 2 diabetes — reduced long COVID incidence among infected patients by 41 per cent.

Roughly six per cent of those taking metformin went on to develop the condition, compared to close to 11 per cent of those in the placebo group. Participants on metformin were also less likely to be hospitalized roughly a month after infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

“Metformin has clinical benefits when used as outpatient treatment for COVID-19 and is globally available, low-cost and safe,” wrote the research team.

Lead author Dr. Carolyn Bramante, a physician-scientist with the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, told CBC News that the effect was even larger when metformin was given quickly �— in less than four days — during someone’s infection. She said metformin may be helping patients fight off the virus, or reducing inflammation, though more research is needed to figure out why the drug appears to work.

“Our data don’t suggest anything about whether metformin would treat long COVID in someone who already has it,” she said, “so that’s an important area of research where trials should be done.”

Two other drugs, ivermectin and fluvoxamine, were also studied, but neither made a difference on the incidence of long COVID.

A new study found metformin — a common treatment for Type 2 diabetes — reduced long COVID incidence among infected patients by 41 per cent. (Francis Dean/Corbis/Getty )

‘Potentially landmark’ findings

The research involved randomized, quadruple-blind trials on roughly 1,400 people at six sites in the U.S., through multiple waves of the pandemic, and looked at both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals — though only those with first-time infections.

Outside medical experts say it’s one of the more robust studies yet on a potential preventative aimed at long COVID.

“I think it’s a significant start to having a better understanding of the role of metformin in reducing the risk of long COVID,” said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist with the University Health Network in Toronto. “There’s been hints of data over the last couple of years … this furthers that discussion.”

If confirmed, the findings are “profound and potentially landmark on two distinct counts,” wrote Dr. Jeremy Faust, from Harvard Medical School, in an accompanying commentary in the Lancet.

The paper offers the “first high-quality evidence” showing incidence of long COVID can be reduced through a medical intervention, he wrote, and offers an important medical contribution regarding the very existence of the condition, since “a treatment can only be effective if there is something to treat.”

Most long COVID symptoms clear up within a year, new research suggests

New research out of Israel suggests most symptoms of long COVID clear up within a year, but some — like weakness and trouble breathing — are more likely to persist.

In a statement, Dr. Frances Williams, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, cautioned there would need to be extensive use of metformin to realize the study’s seemingly impressive outcomes.

“In total, 564 people were exposed to the drug metformin to prevent 23 hypothetical cases. This means 24 people would need to take metformin to prevent one case of [long COVID].”

Fatigue, ‘brain fog’

Marked by a variety of lingering symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath and feelings of ‘brain fog’, and formally known as post COVID-19 condition, long COVID is thought to be less common by this point in the pandemic, largely thanks to widespread protection from vaccinations.

But the condition can still be debilitating for some, including millions of people around the world — including many in Canada — who became infected with earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants before the arrival of vaccines.

While physicians are hopeful the new research may fuel additional study and potentially help bring down long COVID rates even further, there were some key limitations.

For one thing, it only focused on adults between age 30 and 85 who were overweight or had obesity — so the drug’s impact on individuals of other body weights isn’t yet known.

“It’s not entirely clear how generalizable this will be,” Bogoch said.

In his comment for the Lancet, Faust also noted that since the participants were given a diabetes drug, there may be reduced symptoms linked to undiagnosed diabetes among the patients. “Furthermore, the mechanism of action by which metformin might reduce the incidence of long COVID remains unclear,” he wrote.

Dr. Lynora Saxinger, a professor in the division of infectious diseases at the University of Alberta, noted the study didn’t follow long COVID patients using any “standardized criteria.”

But, she said in an email to CBC News, “it still is really positive and encouraging that a treatment in early COVID could reduce risk of prolonged symptoms: additional studies in other patient groups and with more specific long COVID symptom followup will be really helpful.”

Bogoch stressed that, while the drug shows potential, it wouldn’t “solve all of our issues with long COVID.” However, it could become an important tool given its decades-old safety profile, he said.

“If this is something that, indeed, pans out, and if metformin truly has some properties that reduce the risk of developing long COVID, that’s wonderful because it’s a cheap, widely available [drug].”

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Health

Whooping cough is at a decade-high level in US

Published

2 days ago

October 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.

There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.

The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.

Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.

Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.

Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.

“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.

But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.

That includes his own teenage daughter.

“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.

It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.

“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”

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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Health

Scientists show how sperm and egg come together like a key in a lock

Published

2 days ago

October 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.

New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.

“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.

The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.

Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.

It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.

Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.

Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.

The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.

The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Health

Turn Your Wife Into Your Personal Sex Kitten

Published

3 days ago

October 17, 2024

Sven Eggers

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