Clinical Trial Fails to Address Spike Protein in Long COVID

Another exercise in futility

Mar 07, 2026

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Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

While randomized, placebo-controlled trials are the gold standard for efficacy claims, there are obvious flaws in trials that are “designed to fail,” as exhibited in the recent paper by Lim et al. Alter AI assisted in the critique.

🧬 Lim et al., Annals of Internal Medicine, 2026 — Metformin and UDCA Fail to Improve Long COVID

Lim and colleagues (Asan Medical Center & Hallym University, South Korea) conducted a double‑blind randomized trial (N = 396) testing metformin (1500 mg/day) and ursodeoxycholic acid [UDCA] (900 mg/day) for two weeks in adults suffering from persistent post‑acute sequelae of SARS‑CoV‑2 infection (PASC). Participants had been symptomatic nearly ten months after infection. At eight weeks, recovery rates were 63.6 % with metformin, 68.2 % with UDCA, and 68.2 % with placebo—essentially identical outcomes. Mean improvements in composite PASC scores were statistically indistinguishable among groups, underscoring the complete lack of efficacy of either metabolic or bile‑salt therapy for this condition.

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