I think there's always a bias towards publishing "positive" findings over publishing results that don't meet statistical significance thresholds. To a certain extent, nobody wants to fund and perform a study to not find anything. My suspicion is further that studies that don't find anything, don't get published. (Heaven knows I've worked on more than a few pharmaceutical studies that went nowhere.)

It's dietary fiber, FFS. :erg: I almost feel like there's a concerted effort to disguise the fact that the pill studied included fiber. Although, at 200mg/day, it's not much fiber.

The team analyzed blood samples from 70 people with confirmed long COVID to detect microclots. The authors also outlined a 1-month-long dual antiplatelet therapy for 24 people with long COVID. The therapy involved the participants taking 75 milligrams (mg) of Clopidogrel and 75 mg of Aspirin once each day before breakfast.

They also received 5 mg of the direct oral anticoagulant Apixiban twice daily and 40 mg each day of a proton pump inhibitor called Pantoprazole. They took Pantoprazole half an hour before eating their main meal to protect the stomach.

The participants took these drugs under strict medical supervision to mitigate severe side effects.

The participants provided a list of symptoms before and after treatment, and the researchers took blood samples at the end of the month of treatment.

The team found that all 70 participants had microclots in their blood and that all 24 people who received the antiplatelet and anticoagulant therapy reported improvements in their long COVID symptoms; they also saw a reduction of microclots.

Covid-19 does its damage primarily via blood clots and inflammation. Aspirin, despite being one of the world’s oldest and cheapest medicines, is a potent blood thinner and anti-inflammatory agent. It can also block clots from forming. It seemed worth a look.

The early findings were promising. One study in the U.S. found that hospitalized Covid-19 patients promptly treated with aspirin were much less likely to need mechanical ventilation or ICU care than those who did not get the drug. Aspirin administration also reduced the risk of death.
There’s reason to believe that aspirin — if taken early enough in the course of infection — could provide life-saving benefits.

When that study came out last October, I spoke with two of its authors. They were optimistic about aspirin’s potential but said more work was needed to back up their findings.
Some of the research that followed seemed to deflate the aspirin balloon. A meta-analysis published last January in the American Journal of Cardiology concluded that aspirin treatment does not reduce Covid-19 mortality. More recently, an NIH-sponsored clinical trial found no evidence that giving aspirin to Covid-19 patients led to better outcomes.
Despite these findings, there’s still reason to believe that aspirin — if taken early enough in the course of infection — could provide life-saving benefits.

The most compelling evidence comes from a group of researchers at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). For a study published earlier this year, the VA group examined health data collected from more than 35,000 people, many of whom were at increased risk for severe Covid-19 disease due to age and comorbidities.
About one in four people in the study were taking aspirin for medical reasons. (A daily low-dose aspirin is often prescribed for those at risk for heart trouble or stroke.) After controlling for variables that could skew their data, the VA team found that the risk of death due to Covid-19 decreased by more than 60% among aspirin users, compared to a matched group that did not take aspirin.

“When we first saw the data, we didn’t quite believe it,” says Thomas Osborne, MD, first author of the study and director of the VA’s National Center for Collaborative Healthcare Innovation. The protective effects of aspirin were so robust that he and his co-authors took extra time to review their work and confirm their figures with outside experts. Everything held up. “We thought geez, this is a big deal,” Osborne says.
A highly respected journal, PLOS ONE, published his group’s findings in February. That same month, a similar study from Israel also found that people taking aspirin to prevent heart disease were protected from Covid-19. Osborne says he expected to see significant interest and follow-up work on aspirin. But so far that hasn’t happened. “I don’t understand it,” he says.

“It is amazing to me that aspirin isn’t a bigger part of the dialogue.”

He and I talked about some of the other aspirin research that has appeared this year, including the prominent NIH-funded clinical trial that failed to find evidence of a benefit. He says it’s possible that this trial discouraged interest in aspirin, but he doesn’t believe its findings clash with his own. That’s because, in the NIH-funded trial, people started taking aspirin relatively late in the course of the infection.

“Aspirin may work really well as a preventative, but it can’t dissolve a blood clot once it’s formed,” he explains. “So I think the key to aspirin is taking it before you get really sick.”