June 9, 2023 — In a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, University of Minnesota researchers found that metformin, a drug commonly used to treat diabetes, prevents the development of long COVID.
The study, called COVID-OUT, investigated if early outpatient COVID-19 treatment with metformin, ivermectin, or fluvoxamine could prevent long COVID.
Metformin’s ability to stop the virus was predicted by a simulator. David Odde, a co-investigator of the trial, a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and co-director the Cancer Bioengineering Initiative led the team that developed the simulator.
The model has been highly accurate to-date, successfully predicting, among others, the failure of hydroxychloroquine and the success of remdesivir before the results of clinical trials testing these therapies were announced.
A simulator developed by Prof. David Odde and his team was used in a large, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The long-term outcome from a randomized trial is high-quality evidence that metformin prevents harm from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.