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A mix of prebiotics and probiotics may relieve some symptoms of Long Covid. This emerges from a Chinese study in which more than 450 people took part.
A daily cocktail of prebiotics and probiotics can help combat fatigue, memory loss and gastrointestinal distress in people with long Covid. To achieve this, the drug must be taken daily for six months.
Disturbed intestines
Long Covid is a condition in which people suffer from persistent symptoms for months or years after contracting Covid-19. Little is known about the disease. Previous research has shown that people with the condition have fewer certain types of gut microbes than healthy people. These are primarily intestinal bacteria that produce so-called short-chain fatty acids: substances that control our immune responses.
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Medical researcher Siew Ng from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and her colleagues have therefore developed a mixture that stimulates the production of short-chain fatty acids. They called the stuff SIM01. The mixture contains three probiotics (live bacteria that are good for health) and three prebiotics (substances that promote the growth of beneficial gut microbes).
This cocktail was served to a group of 232 adults. A control group of 231 adults took a mixture of starch and some vitamin C. Both mixtures were taken twice daily for six months. All participants had had Corona in the past and met the criteria for Long Covid set by the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Participants completed a questionnaire before and after treatment sharing information about fourteen different Long Covid symptoms. It showed that, on average, people who received SIM01 were 2 to 2.5 times more likely to notice improvements in five different symptoms: fatigue, memory loss, problems concentrating, general malaise and gastrointestinal distress. There were no side effects of therapy in this group.
Intestinal flora
The researchers also collected fecal samples from their subjects. SIM01 was shown to improve gut microbial diversity and promote the growth of beneficial gut bacteria, says Ng.
The drug could therefore also help with other diseases that are related to a disturbed intestinal microbiome, says Ng. An example of this is chronic fatigue syndrome.
It is still unclear why the changes in the intestine alleviated the Long Covid symptoms, says biologist Timothy Sampson from Emory University in the US state of Georgia. “Although it makes sense that the microbiome can mediate immune responses, it is not clear that this is the case.” [immuunsysteem] actually underlies Long Covid symptoms,” he says.
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