“These are patients that have been unwell for a very long time,” emphasises Dr Glynne. “They’ve been to the long Covid clinic and they’ve been to their GP, and nothing’s helped. So they come to me with very debilitating symptoms – maybe they can’t even work. Then you start them on HRT and they just can’t believe it.” Married GPs compared notes on their patients to make a startling conclusion - treatment for the menopause could alleviate symptoms She and Paul – who has also adopted HRT as a treatment – are currently seeing three types of women. There are those who have overlapping Covid and menopause symptoms, for whom HRT can treat the former and make it easier to identify the latter The second are perimenopausal women who have been misdiagnosed with long Covid, and who may have experienced more severe onset of menopausal symptoms due to Covid. “We will never know, but either way HRT is likely to be of benefit,” says Dr Glynne. Finally, a third group has manageable menopausal symptoms, but are struggling with long Covid specific ones, such as inflammation of the heart. “But because oestrogen is anti-inflammatory, it is possible that HRT may indirectly boost their immune systems, optimising their response to other drugs and facilitating recovery,” says Dr Glynne. “In all three groups, oestrogen deficiency underlies or contributes to symptoms.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/doctors-treating-long-covid-hrt/
Menopause and Long COVID: What Women Should Know https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/992853 paywalled to unpaywall scroll to bottom of page: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/992853
Can't help but grimly chuckle where the doctor at the end of the piece has to scold women about not eating sweets and making sure to get 7 hours of sleep at night. As if I have any f***ing control over how much sleep I get at this point... That said, given my own experience with perimenopause, I'm very interested in how sex hormones are interacting with whatever the mechanism of action is in ME/CFS. I keep trying to go down the PubMed/Wikipedia rabbit hole on estrogen and its possible connection but brain fog keeps me from getting very far.
I realise this topic is about long covid but I have years of experience with HRT and much longer with ME. I've been using a low dose oestradiol/norithesterone patch for over twenty years. Originally it was prescribed for the usual symptoms - hot flushes etc. but my worst symptom by far was severe anxiety. Out of curiosity I've tried to wean myself off it a few times, taking three months to do so. Shortly after completely stopping, the hot flushes and severe, intolerable anxiety returned. So I will be on HRT for life. As for how it affects my ME symptoms - it doesn't as far as I can tell. I've had ME most of my life. The characteristic brain fog, muscle pain, activity intolerance, sleep problems and so on were always present and have slowly worsened with time. Starting HRT did not alter that progression. My ME just continued to slowly worsen in the same way. The risk of combined oestrogen and progestogen treatment is unknown but presumed to be negligible. However, oestrogen alone has the risks that the article talks about. Perhaps there is some reason to not use progestogen in long covid treatment or perhaps it just wasn't mentioned - ?
