Candidate Treatments for Long COVID: A Narrative Review of Expert and Patient Priorities

Shaira Nicole Baptista's narrative review, published on figshare in March 2026, maps evidence for 14 candidate treatments for long COVID. The review, which uses a monthly-updated living evidence database and stakeholder surveys, found that only six interventions had long-COVID-specific randomized controlled trial evidence. The 15.4 KB document synthesizes findings on treatment feasibility, acceptability, and safety.

Use Cases

• Prioritizing clinical trial candidates based on biological plausibility and stakeholder acceptability mentioned in the review.
• Mapping the evidence landscape for long COVID interventions based on the described synthesis of RCTs and other study designs.
• Informing research agendas based on the structured prioritization process involving clinicians and people with lived experience.

Strengths

• Explicitly lists 14 prioritized candidate treatments, including low-dose naltrexone, antivirals, and metformin.
• Sources evidence from a monthly-updated living evidence database and supplementary searches.
• Incorporates stakeholder input from both clinicians and people with lived experience via surveys.

Limitations

• The dataset is a 15.4 KB DOCX file, indicating a very limited scope focused on review text rather than primary data.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Evidence certainty for most interventions is described as low to very low, relying on indirect or uncontrolled studies.

Provenance

Source

Shaira Nicole Baptista via figshare.

Collection Method

Narrative review using pragmatic methods, including database searches, stakeholder surveys, and rapid evidence summaries.

Time Range

Review conducted up to March 2026; evidence database was updated monthly.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-18 07:39:21.

Geography

Global, as the evidence search included international databases and trial registries.