Publication date: Jul 22, 2026
“This trial gives clinicians their first strong evidence for a medication that helps reduce long COVID fatigue. Participants were randomly placed into one of three groups and received fluvoxamine (sold under the brand name Luvox), metformin (a common diabetes medication), or a placebo for 60 days. “Fluvoxamine showed consistent and meaningful benefits, and because it’s already widely used and well understood, it has clear potential for clinical use. Earlier research found that taking metformin during the initial stage of a COVID infection could lower the risk of later developing long COVID. Participants who received fluvoxamine also reported gains in overall quality of life across several measures. Metformin did not produce the same results. This approach can produce reliable conclusions more quickly than a conventional trial while maintaining scientific rigor. Despite the scale of the problem, there are still few treatments supported by strong clinical evidence.
| Concepts | Keywords |
|---|---|
| Brazil | |
| Clear | |
| Clinical | |
| Covid | |
| Evidence | |
| Fatigue | |
| Fluvoxamine | |
| Long | |
| Mcmaster | |
| Meaningful | |
| Medication | |
| Placebo | |
| Symptoms | |
| Trial | |
| University |
Semantics
| Type | Source | Name |
|---|---|---|
| disease | MESH | included |
| disease | MESH | SARS-CoV-2 infection |
| pathway | REACTOME | SARS-CoV-2 Infection |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Metformin |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Tropicamide |
| disease | MESH | infection |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Nonoxynol-9 |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Fluvoxamine |
| disease | MESH | fatigue |
| disease | MESH | long COVID |