Patients are visiting private clinics in Cyprus, Germany and Switzerland for procedures such as blood filtration therapy and anti-clotting therapy, according to research by the British Medical Journal and ITV News. However, experts have raised concerns about whether such invasive and expensive treatments should be offered without sufficient evidence. “I am concerned that these patients have been offered treatments that have not been evaluated by modern scientific methods – well-designed clinical trials,” said Beverley Hunt, medical director of the charity Thrombosis UK. “In this situation, the treatment may or may not benefit them, but, worryingly, it also carries the risk of harm.” The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that between 10% and 20% of people experience symptoms for at least two months after an acute Covid infection. In the UK, long-term Covid is defined by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) guidelines as having new or ongoing symptoms four weeks or more after the onset of illness. The Office for National Statistics estimates that the number of people with long-term Covid rose from 1.3 million in January this year to 2 million in May. Symptoms may include fatigue, shortness of breath, loss of concentration and joint pain. Outside of daily activities, the condition can be severely limiting for some people. Researchers, health experts and clinicians are trying to investigate possible treatments for long-term Covid, but because the condition is still new, there is no internationally agreed treatment pathway. Aspiration, a blood filtration treatment commonly used for lipid disorders, involves inserting needles into each arm and passing the blood over a filter, separating red blood cells from plasma. The plasma is then recombined with red blood cells and returned to the body through a different vein. Gitte Boumeester, a practicing psychiatrist in Almelo, Netherlands, tried it after developing severe long-term Covid symptoms. After being treated at The Long Covid Center in Cyprus at a cost of more than €50,000 (£42,376), she returned home with no improvement in her symptoms. He received six rounds of removal, as well as nine rounds of hyperbaric oxygen and intravenous vitamin drip treatment at the Poseidonia clinic next door. Boumeester has also been advised to buy hydroxychloroquine as an early treatment package should she be re-infected with Covid, despite a Cochrane review concluding that the drug is “unlikely” to have any benefit in preventing the disease. Dr. Beate Jaeger, an internal medicine physician, began treating long-term removal patients with Covid in February last year at her clinic in Mülheim, Germany, after reading reports that Covid causes blood clotting problems. She told the BMJ that she has now treated thousands at her clinic after patients shared their stories on social media and through word of mouth. Jaeger accepts that the treatment is experimental for long with Covid, but said trials are taking too long when the pandemic has left millions with the condition around the world. Chris Witham, a 45-year-old long-term Covid patient from Bournemouth, England, spent around £7,000 on withdrawal treatment (including travel and accommodation) in Kempten, Germany, last year. “I would sell my house and give it away to get better, without a second thought,” he said. The treatment did not improve long-term Covid symptoms, the BMJ reported. While some doctors and researchers believe ablation and anticoagulant drugs may be promising treatments for long-term Covid, others worry that increasingly desperate patients are spending life-changing sums on invasive, unproven treatments. Shamil Haroon, a clinical lecturer in primary care at the University of Birmingham and researcher in the Therapies for Long Covid (TLC) trial in non-hospital patients, believes such an “experimental” treatment should only be done in the context of a clinical trial. “It’s not surprising that people who were previously high functioning, who are now impaired, unable to work, unable to support themselves financially, would look elsewhere for treatments,” he said. “It’s a completely rational response to a situation like this. But people could potentially go bankrupt by accessing these treatments, for which there is limited evidence of effectiveness.” Marcus Klotz, co-founder of the Long Covid Center, told the BMJ: “We as a clinic neither advertise nor promote. We accept patients who have microcirculatory problems and want to be treated with HELP ablation… If a patient needs a prescription, it is assessed individually by our doctor or the patient is referred to other specialist doctors where appropriate.” A spokesperson for the Poseidonia clinic said all treatments offered “are always based on medical and clinical assessment by our doctors and clinical nutritionist, diagnosis through blood tests with laboratory monitoring in accordance with good medical practice”.
