After taking a combination of medicines, eight patients with long COVID had their brain fog lifted.
N-acetylcysteine is included in the combo.
Both medicines are FDA approved and widely available for the safe treatment of a variety of disorders. Both have mild side effects and are well-liked by everyone.
The initial signs are very promising, even though guanfacine and NAC have only been tested on a small group of long-haulers. There are more trials that need to be done to prove the drug combo improves brain fog.
The researchers think that clinicians should prescribe guanfacine to patients because of the seriousness of long COVID. NAC can be found over the counter in the US.
If patients have a physician who can read our paper, we're hoping that they can access help right now.
Millions of desperate patients could be helped by the combination of drugs, according to her and her colleagues.
For 'off-label' reasons, clinicians often prescribe guanfacine for other disorders of the prefrontal cortex. The drug is thought to increase activity in parts of the brain that deal with higher-order processing.
One of the most common symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome is brain fog.
A sense of mental fatigue is not the only thing that is cast a long shadow by long COVID. Slowing thinking, memory loss, poor concentration, and feelings of confusion are all caused by the cognitive effects.
Many people with long COVID have spoken out about how their illness has made it hard for them to live a healthy life. It's one of the most disabling parts of the brain.
Millions of people have left the workforce in the US since 2020. There isn't much doctors can do to help these patients.
There is a lack of treatment for long cognitive brain fog, so when I kept seeing the benefits of this treatment in patients, I felt a sense of urgent need to spread the word.
You don't have to wait for a trial to start. You can ask your doctor about these drugs.
The drug combination was first tried by Fesharaki-Zadeh after she considered the effects of the disease on the body.
There was no approved treatment for the common symptom of brain fog when his first COVID patient came to him.
He thought that what he saw in his long COVID patient was similar to what he saw in patients after a concussion.
Long COVID is a hard hit to the head. The disease was causing harm from within.
The drug NAC is often prescribed for patients with traumatic brain injury.
The patient began to report improvements in energy and memory.
GAINFACINE was added to the mix and seems to work in synergy with NAC.
The brain fog wasn't going away.
The drug combo was tested on a dozen other patients. At night, participants took 1 gram of guanfacine. The guanfacine dose was increased after a month.
The eight participants who finished the trial reported benefits to their skills. Some people said they had regained their sense of self after losing their brain fog.
Two patients left the trial due to low blood pressure.
One case study proved to be particularly illuminating.
A nurse who had to take time off work reported significant benefits to her working memory, executive functioning, and cognitive processing speed after taking NAC and guanfacine each day. The medication caused an episode of low blood pressure so it had to be stopped.
Immediately after the drugs were stopped, the nurse's concentration and brain power went downhill.
The patient felt better when she decided to go back on the drug regimen. She has not had a single episode of low blood pressure for a year now.
"This was not a placebo-controlled trial, but anecdotes like this make one more confident that the relief is due to the drug and not the placebo effect."
The case study at Yale will lead to further research.
There was a study published.
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