Sydney, June 28 (Ians) Australian researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have developed a new drug that could help long Covid symptoms including fatigue, breathlessness and brain fog, affecting between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of the millions infected with Covid-19.

The drug, NACE2i, is a potential treatment for long Covid that will relieve those debilitating symptoms and revive immune function, said the team from Qimr Berghofer in Brisbane.

“We uncovered the pathway that the virus uses to induce the persistent inflammation which causes organ damage found in long Covid. This study shows our drug prevents that and even repairs damaged lung tissue in pre-clinical models. It is both a prevention and a treatment,” said epigeneticist and co-lead author, Professor Sudha Rao who heads Qimr Berghofer’s Gene Regulation & Translational Medicine Group.

“In the damaged lung, you see it is missing the surface layer of the lung bronchiole area. After treatment with NACE2i,...