Many experts think that the Covid-19 outbreak is a mass disabling event. Some patients develop long Covid after recovering from a battle with the coronaviruses. There are different estimates of how many Covid patients endure long-term symptoms. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost one in five Covid patients have persistent symptoms. Estimates still show that tens of millions of Covid-19 cases have lasting effects.
Researchers are trying to understand and treat this new phenomenon as patients seek effective care. Patients have reported long waits at clinics and little treatment options when they see a care provider.
The people with the stethoscopes. Unscrupulous actors are likely to step in and offer products and treatments that are not proven to work. When modern medicine can't provide evidence-based treatment, quacks come in to console the patients. They rebuke modern medicine, scowl at callous physicians, and question the price of clinical trials. Bad actors can sell false hope and treatments with ill-gotten trust.
There are already reports of such treatments in the US. The British investigation shows a growing international trend of expensive blood washing treatments.
It is costly cleanse.
Thousands of long- Covid patients are traveling to private clinics in various countries, including Switzerland, Germany, and Cyprus, to receive apheresis, which is not proven to treat long Covid patients are traveling to private clinics in various countries, including Switzerland, Germany, and Cyprus, to
Apheresis works by removing problematic components of the blood, such as low density lipoprotein in people with high cholesterol, or white blood cells in people with leukemia.
A variety of things that may or may not be problematic can be removed with apheresis treatments. A strategy originally designed to treat people with cardiovascular disease is included. Beate Jaeger is an internal medicine doctor who runs the Lipid Center North Rhine in Germany and has begun treating patients with long-covid patients. A cocktail of drugs is prescribed to long-covid patients.
People with long Covid have blood that is too dense and has small blood clot. Thinning the blood with drugs and apheresis can improve health, according to her. There isn't any evidence that this hypothesis is correct or that the treatment works. Her hypothesis was turned down when she tried to publish it.
The treatment is premature according to Robert Ariens, professor of cardiovascular biology at the University of Yorkshire. Researchers don't understand how microclots form, if apheresis and anticoagulation drugs reduce them, and if a reduction would affect disease. It seems premature to design a treatment to take the microclots away, as both apheresis and triple anticoagulation are not without risks, the obvious one.
There is a false hope.
Patients were treated despite a rejected hypothesis and lack of evidence. She claimed to have treated patients who walked out of her clinic after arriving in wheelchairs. She doesn't want to wait for 100 percent evidence when she sees a child in a wheelchair.
Other clinics have begun to offer apheresis for Covid. After seeing positive anecdotes online, a woman in the Netherlands paid more than $60,000 for treatment at a new long-covid clinic in Cyprus. The woman, desperate for relief from her long- Covid symptoms, signed a dubious consent form filled with spelling mistakes and half-finished sentences.
The form wouldn't work under English and Welsh law, according to a London barrister. He told the investigators that they couldn't say that they wouldn't file a lawsuit if they cause an injury or death. It's not possible to do that.
The apheresis, along with a battery of other treatments, was given to Boumeester at the Cyprus clinic. After two months in Cyprus, she had seen no improvement in her symptoms, which included heart palpitations, chest pain, and brain fog.
The treatments are so expensive that they should emphasize the experimental nature of them more. I realized before I started that the outcome was uncertain, but everyone at the clinic is so positive that you start to believe it as well.
The story was first published on Ars Technica.
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