Canada is among six countries where new clinical trials will be run to test whether two existing anti-inflammatory medicines could also be used a treatment for long COVID.
Western University and Schmidt Initiative for Long COVID (SILC) have partnered to conduct the global clinical trials. They will be run at seven different sites in Canada, the U.S. Brazil, Italy, Uganda, and Zambia.
“Despite the global prevalence of long COVID, patients report different symptoms and their presentation can be influenced by where they happen to live,” said Dr. Douglas Fraser, a professor at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. “A study with global reach, tailored to examine each patient’s most severe symptoms, has the potential to bring hope to people well beyond Canada and the U.S.”
The two drugs at the heart of the trial are upadacitinib and pirfenidone, both of which have prior approval for the treatment of arthritis and lung disease. The drugs were identified in an earlier study funded by SILC as being able to interrupt several common biological pathways for the progression of the disease.
More than 300 long COVID patients will be enrolled in the clinical trials. Researchers will then track five symptoms — fatigue, breathing issues, memory and thinking problems, muscle and joint aches, and circulation — to determine which is most severe in each patient. From there they will investigate the effectiveness of the two drugs at treating the symptoms for the first three months. That will be followed by an analysis and then additional monitoring of patients for another three months. As a control, some patients will be given placebos while other will receive the actual drugs. If the two drugs show promising results, researchers will stop using the placebo.
“Drug repurposing has the potential to bring effective treatments to long COVID patients worldwide far more quickly than creating a new medicine from scratch,” said SILC CEO Dr. John Redd. “Our hope is that the 65 million people living each day with this often debilitating condition will soon find relief for their symptoms—no matter where in the world they happen to live.”
This clinical trial is the second of three set to be conducted during the first half of 2025.