Long Covid patients, in search of relief, turn to private company

NBC News

A full two years into the coronavirus pandemic, long-haul Covid patients remain sick and in desperate search of answers. They've lost jobs. They've lost their sense of self. Many say they have lost faith in the medical community.

Despite multiple studies, the launch of dozens of specialized long Covid clinics and $1.15 billion in federal funding for the National Institutes of Health to study the condition, there remains a dearth of proven treatments for people who are suffering from lingering illness after their infection. 

"There is no one right answer for many of our patients," said Dr. Ben Abramoff, director of the Post-COVID Assessment and Recovery Clinic at Penn Medicine, which has seen more than 1,100 long Covid patients.

Compounding the problem is a lack of consensus on how to define long Covid, according to a commentary published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine from researchers at UCLA Health and the David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles. ...

...many patients say finding treatment for long Covid can be time-consuming and draining. That gap has allowed private companies to step in with promises of relief. 

The most well-known is IncellDx, a California-based company that said it has accomplished three key goals specific to long Covid: a diagnostic test, a treatment plan, including an HIV drug and cholesterol-lowering medications, and a way to show patients that the treatment is working.

Critics counter that there are no simple blood tests or widely accepted biomarkers to determine whether someone has long Covid. Even at highly respected clinics, treatment regimens vary widely and doctors don't offer cures. Instead, most treat the symptoms in an effort to get patients back to some sense of normalcy. 

The myriad symptoms that come with long Covid make it difficult to come up with a standardized treatment.  ...