Episode 25: Myth or Magic - Maraviroc and Long Covid
Dr. Bruce Patterson has an impressive resume from making key discoveries in HIV research in the 1990s to later becoming director of clinical virology and co-director of the AIDS Research Center at Stanford. In 2009 he started his own medical diagnostic company, IncellDX. It is with IncellDX he turned his attention to the post-viral condition we call Long Covid. Patterson believes that he has not only found a blood test to diagnose the syndrome but also offers a treatment.
14,000 Long Covid sufferers in the United States have signed up to covidlonghaulers.com to seek help from Dr. Patterson and his team. The treatment is aimed at addressing the underlying immunologic causes of Long Covid. Patterson, as detailed the recently published report here, believes a residue of SARS CoV-2 S1 Protein in CD16+ Monocytes over-activates the immune system. In a disease this new, for those of us receiving any treatment it is purely symptomatic such as beta-blockers or anti histamines. IncellDX offers a treatment protocol involving a combination of off-label medications including statins and an HIV medication called Maraviroc.
This curative approach is very attractive to the millions of sufferers looking for a silver bullet, but it is hard to find a definitive answer on the level of success or failure of this treatment. There are stories from patients on both sides. There have, to date, been only small trails conducted and published and no fully randomised control trials have yet started. And it is not cheap: the drugs are off-license in the United States so are not covered by insurance.
Dr. Patterson is about to start offering European patients the same services. There has been some bad press about his unorthodox treatment, the protocol rolled out with inadequate research and talk of him using people’s desperation to make financial gain. Other doctors have said that that both the test and the treatment are unproven.
What we will point out is that although there is yet to be more research rigour conducted on his theories, this situation is not new to the Long Covid Community. The micro-clot theory was heralded as a breakthrough with just 20 patients. People began HELP Apheresis, at considerable personal cost, as a treatment without proven benefit. Doctors in the UK are waiting on much more work to be done in order to start prescribing anticoagulants as a matter of course. But what else do we have? Without medical pioneers, no new frontiers will ever be found and we will be left on the scrapheap of pandemic detritus.
Listen to the interview, make up your own mind and do more research.