A type of respiratory therapy that involves breathing 100% pure oxygen in a hyperbaric chamber improved symptoms of fatigue, brain fog, mood and pain in patients experiencing long COVID-19.
The treatment, known as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, delivers oxygen to poorly perfused tissues and works to reverse "the local hypoxia and aiding in recovery of injured tissue." It also helps reduce inflammation, induces angiogenesis which helps heal vascular damage, and facilitates the production of new, healthy neurons within compromised brain tissue, according to the study published Feb. 15 in Nature Scientific Reports.
Even one year after receiving their last hyperbaric oxygen therapy treatment, the improvements experienced following the therapy by the 31 patients involved in the study were enduring with improvements in quality of life, quality of sleep, psychiatric conditions and pain.
"[T]he clinical results were preserved after one year, reinforcing the previous findings that these are permanent changes driven by constant microstructural changes, i.e., brain injury recovery…" the authors wrote of the results. "New HBOT protocols have been recently shown to facilitate neuroplasticity and enhance brain injury recovery, even when administered months or years after the initial injury. These protocols, including the one implemented in our original and present study, leverage the 'Hyperoxic-Hypoxic paradox'. This paradox involves the repeated fluctuations in pressure and oxygen concentrations, which, in turn, trigger the expression of genes and activate metabolic pathways vital for regeneration."
This is reportedly the first study to measure outcomes of hyperbaric oxygen therapy on long COVID patients, and the authors note that future research will need to be done before it is a widely recommended therapy for treating patients.