The next phase in Long COVID research: addressing the ethical challenges in trials of disease-modifying treatments.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 42163969.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1016/j.eclinm.2026.103918 and PMC identifier 13185860.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Almost five years after COVID-19 emerged, multiple scientific uncertainties remain about why some people experience ongoing symptoms long after being infected with SARS-CoV-2 (Long COVID). The pathophysiology underlying Long COVID and its potential to represent several endotypes are still under investigation. These scientific uncertainties around Long COVID have been cited as a reason to delay treatment trials until the disease is better understood. In this paper, a group of bioethicists, clinician-scientists and people with lived experience with Long COVID argue that it is ethically imperative to conduct trials of disease-modifying treatments for Long COVID now. Furthermore, we argue that although conducting such trials can pose ethical challenges, these challenges can be overcome through careful research priority-setting, rigorous trial design, fair participant selection, and ensuring that the risk-benefit profile is favorable.