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Metformin shown to prevent long Covid

cidrap.umn.edu

11–20 of 195 posts

Re: Metformin shown to prevent long Covid

#11
post #4

[flagged]

> said that metformin's benefit is at least partly mediated by a near fourfold reduction in viral load. But sure, COVID is a fat people disease.

i think obesity is a risk factor but to call COVID a fat people disease is ignorant. There are many other risk factors (eg being immunocompromised) and you may get it (and long COVID) even without any risk factors.

Re: Metformin shown to prevent long Covid

#12
post #5

Important to note, it can also cause birth defects in male offspring when taken by fathers. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/03/birth-defects... https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4389

That study doesn't claim causation.

Unfortunately the press release—and the author quotes within it—are worded in such a way that it is implied.

Re: Metformin shown to prevent long Covid

#14
post #10

Does it help those with long Covid?

It appears to be prophylactic, it reduces the occurrence of long Covid in those recently testing positive.

Surely it would be like other antivirals(paxlovid) which have shown to help certain long Covid phenotypes?

I.e. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9537824/

> Though not indicated for the treatment of PASC, the treating physician felt that her prolonged nasopharyngeal antigen positivity warranted the treatment. Indeed, the patient’s PASC symptoms fully resolved 3 weeks after completing antiviral treatment

Re: Metformin shown to prevent long Covid

#15
post #4

[flagged]

> said that metformin's benefit is at least partly mediated by a near fourfold reduction in viral load. But sure, COVID is a fat people disease.

It seems disingenuous to imply that the effects of COVID are not worsened by a high body fat percentage and / or poor physical health.

COVID is not a fat persons disease, but as with most detrimental health episodes, the negative effects are greater in people with high body fat percentages.

Re: Metformin shown to prevent long Covid

#16
post #6

Important to note, it can also cause birth defects in male offspring when taken by fathers. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/03/birth-defects... https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4389

> Men who filled metformin prescriptions before or after the three-month period of sperm development did not have offspring with a higher incidence of birth defects, the study found.

what does that mean ? is there a season for sperm development ?

Re: Metformin shown to prevent long Covid

#17
post #6

Important to note, it can also cause birth defects in male offspring when taken by fathers. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/03/birth-defects... https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4389

> Men who filled metformin prescriptions before or after the three-month period of sperm development did not have offspring with a higher incidence of birth defects, the study found.

While more study is warranted, I believe the thesis is there is possibly a similar mechanism to how anti parasitics kill parasites during a specific window of their development cycle (with little effect outside of those windows).

Re: Metformin shown to prevent long Covid

#18

Does it help those with long Covid?

Only in obese and overweight patients (that is the group the drug was tested on).

So, only found to be helpful in obese and overweight patients. It could be effective in other patients, just no data in this study.

Re: Metformin shown to prevent long Covid

#19
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> said that metformin's benefit is at least partly mediated by a near fourfold reduction in viral load. But sure, COVID is a fat people disease.

Obesity is a major risk factor for severe COVID-19 symptoms. https://www.science.org/content/article/why-covid-19-more-de...

That's not the point GP was responding to though. OP was writing as if they just felt better because they were fat, regardless of whether covid had anything to do with it. That simply doesn't match with the study and just comes off like kneejerk fat shaming.
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