A brief survey of interventional agents intended to treat Long COVID

Abstract

The present study provides a brief survey, based on a search of the US National Institutes of Health dataset Clinicaltrials.gov, of clinical trials for interventions that could prevent, mitigate or cure Long COVID, a syndrome of increasing concern to patients and their physicians, as the acute phase years of the main pandemic recede and some patients remain afflicted by the failure of the disease signs to completely abate. The disease is pleomorphic in its presentations and severity, with the consequence that there is no one generally accepted approach to treatment, and clinical trial design can be a challenge. At time of writing, there is no approved therapeutic intervention or combination of interventions for Long COVID. Over the last 3 years, there have been several reviews of the state-of-play in relation to therapies for long COVID; however, this is a rapidly moving field and the intention of this brief article is to provide a succinct update on a subset of potential interventional therapies that are currently undergoing clinical trial. There are at least 82 unique active agents in development, and they are characterised by diverse mechanisms of action; however, the emergency approach that was employed during the COVID-19 pandemic is not being replicated for development of treatments for Long COVID.