New Study Shows Low Dose Naltrexone may be beneficial for treating Long COVID.

I have written earlier articles on my website, regarding the potential benefits of Low Dose Natrexone (LDN), for a number of Autoimmune and Chronic inflammatory conditions. In my practice, I have received positive feedback from people using LDN for the aforementioned conditions. LDN continues to suffer from inadequate funding to fund the sort of large scale studies, that would allow it to be a fully “mainstream” remedy with FDA approval.

That being said, there are several small studies available, regarding LDN.

I have below the most recent study I came across, regarding the potential benefits of LDN, in treating Long COVID:

The article on MedPage Today, was written by Terrence Rudd is a staff writer at MedPage Today. In his article, he stated that “For their study, the investigators analyzed patient electronic health records from the Stanford Long COVID Clinic from 2023 to December 2025. Patients included in the analysis were adults with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and persistent symptoms at least 90 days after infection. They had to have had at least two clinic visits: a baseline visit before taking naltrexone, and at least one follow-up visit while on the drug.”

“Median patient age was 45.4 years, 67% were female. Most patients were fully vaccinated for COVID-19 (85.2%) and had been infected with an Omicron variant (70.9%). Median time from COVID-19 infection to naltrexone start was 606 days, initial median number of symptoms was 12, and patients' initial seven-symptom median composite score was 20. The median final naltrexone dose was 4 mg.

More than half of patients reported reduced daily activity from long COVID (55.7%), with another 24.3% reporting struggles with normal daily activities, and 8.3% reporting that they were incapacitated and bedridden.

Patients saw significant improvements across a range of individual symptoms, with adjusted mean annual changes as follows:

Fatigue: -0.90 (95% CI -1.36 to -0.44, P<0.001)

Brain fog: -1.27 (95% CI -1.84 to -0.69, P<0.001)

Unrefreshing sleep: -1.06 (95% CI -1.59 to -0.53, P<0.001)

Difficulty sleeping: -1.01 (95% CI -1.63 to -0.39, P=0.001)

Post-exertional malaise: -1.44 (95% CI -2.11 to -0.77, P<0.001)

Patients didn't see significant improvements in headache or lightheadedness.

Aflak acknowledged that the study's lack of a control group as a comparison creates concerns that natural progression of long COVID or concurrent treatments could confound some of the observations.”

To explain the study’s ending comment - B.Aflak who presented the above study at IDWeek, stated that the study did not have a control group (people with Long COVID who did not use LDN), so they cannot say if the improvements were due to the condition running its course.

I will conclude by saying, that the clinical experience I have had with people using LDN for anti-inflammatory purposes, in conditions such as Long COVID, is that it does help to relieve symptoms of fatigue, insomnia, chronic pain and other symptoms. As COVID itself is a new disease condition, we can expect there to be more findings as time goes by. At this time, if you have Long COVID, and have not found relief from all or some of your symptoms, this new study may be of interest to you.