Thousands of people with prolonged Covid are traveling abroad to spend huge sums of money on unproven treatments such as “blood washing”, prompting warnings from experts and doctors.
Patients visit private clinics in Cyprus, Germany and Switzerland for procedures such as blood filtration treatment and anti-clotting therapy, according to an investigation by the British Medical Journal and ITV News.
However, experts have raised concerns about whether such invasive and expensive therapies should be offered without sufficient evidence.
“I am concerned that these patients have been offered therapies 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, treatment may or may not benefit them, but, worryingly, there is also a risk of harm.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that between 10% and 20% of people experience symptoms at least two months after an acute Covid infection.
In the UK, long Covid is defined by National Institute for Health and Care (Nice) guidelines as the presence of 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 prolonged Covid increased 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. As well as affecting daily activities, the condition can be severely limiting for some people.
Researchers, health experts and clinicians are scrambling to explore possible treatments for lingering Covid, but because the condition is still new, there is no internationally agreed treatment pathway.
Apheresis, a blood filtration treatment commonly used for lipid disorders, involves inserting needles into each arm and passing the blood through a filter, separating the red blood cells from the plasma. The plasma is then recombined with red blood cells and returned to the body through a different vein.
Gitte Boumeester, a trainee psychiatrist in Almelo, the Netherlands, tried it after developing severe, prolonged Covid symptoms.
After undergoing treatment at The Long Covid Center in Cyprus at a cost of over €50,000 (£42,376), she returned home with no improvement in her symptoms. She received six rounds of apheresis, as well as nine rounds of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and an intravenous vitamin drip at the Poseidonia clinic next door to the clinic.
Boumeester was also advised to buy hydroxychloroquine as an early treatment package in case she re-infected with Covid, although the Cochrane review concluded that the drug was “unlikely” to have any benefit in preventing the disease.
Dr. Beate Jäger, an internal medicine physician, began treating long-term Covid patients with apheresis last February at her clinic in Mülheim, Germany, after reading reports that Covid caused blood clotting problems. She told the BMJ that she has already treated thousands at her clinic after patients shared their stories on social media and by word of mouth.
Jaeger accepted the treatment was experimental for lingering Covid, but said trials were taking too long when the pandemic had left millions with the disease around the world.
Chris Whitham, a 45-year-old long-term Covid sufferer from Bournemouth, England, spent around £7,000 on apheresis 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 his long-standing Covid symptoms, the BMJ reported.
While some doctors and researchers believe that apheresis and anticoagulant drugs may be promising treatments for lingering Covid, others worry that patients are becoming increasingly desperate and spending life-changing sums on invasive, unproven treatments.
Shamil Haroon, a clinical lecturer in primary care at the University of Birmingham and an investigator in the Outpatient Long Covid Therapies (TLC) trial, believes such “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 exhausted, unable to work, unable to support themselves financially, would seek treatment elsewhere,” he said.
“It’s a perfectly rational response to a situation like this. But people could potentially go bankrupt if they access these treatments, for which there is limited evidence of effectiveness.
Markus Klotz, co-founder of the Long Covid Center, told The BMJ: “We as a clinic neither advertise nor advertise. We accept patients who have microcirculation problems and want to be treated with HELP apheresis… If the patient needs a prescription, this is assessed individually by our doctor or the patient is referred to other specialist doctors when necessary.’
A spokesperson for the Poseidonia clinic said all treatments offered were “always based on a medical and clinical assessment by our doctors and clinical nutritionist, diagnosis through blood tests with laboratory follow-ups according to good medical practice”.
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