(Paris) A diabetes drug, both cheap and widely available, would reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19 by 40% long after testing positive for COVID-19, according to a study published on Friday.
This discovery could be a landmark in the fight against this disease, still mysterious and which, according to the World Health Organization, affects one in 10 people who catch COVID-19.
A randomized, placebo-controlled phase 3 trial tested a drug called metformin. Originally developed from the French lilac flower, it has been the world’s most commonly used treatment for type 2 diabetes for decades.
This means that it is reputed to be safe, in addition to being inexpensive and widely available.
The study, published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseasesinvolved 1,126 overweight or obese people in the United States, with half receiving metformin and the other half a placebo in the days after testing positive for COVID-19.
After 10 months, 35 of the participants who had taken metformin were diagnosed with long COVID-19, compared to 58 for the placebo group, representing a 40% reduction in risk.
The trial was conducted between December 2020 and January 2022, meaning it included the Omicron variant, which is believed to have caused fewer long-lasting COVID-19s than previous strains, the research says.
The team behind the trial had previously shown that metformin reduced the risk of emergency room visits, hospitalizations and patient death by more than 40%.
“Our data show that metformin reduces the amount of SARS-CoV-2 virus” in patients, Carolyn Bramante, a researcher at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the new study, told AFP.
If confirmed, these results would be “potentially significant” for long-term COVID-19 research, said Jeremy Faust, a Harvard Medical School doctor not involved in the study.
Frances Williams, professor of epidemiology at King’s College London, however, notes that 564 people had to take this drug to “avoid 23 hypothetical cases” of long COVID-19. Which means that “24 people took metformin to prevent one case of long COVID-19”.
The researchers clarified that the drug had not been tested on people already suffering from long-term COVID-19, and therefore could not be used to treat this disease but only to prevent it.
The study also found that the antiparasitic drug ivermectin, which has been the subject of misinformation throughout the pandemic, as well as the antidepressant fluvoxamine, did not prevent people from getting long-lasting COVID-19s.