NCT06214455

Diet and Fasting for Long COVID

The Effect of a No-added Sugar Diet, Time-restricted Eating and Periodic Water Fasting on Long COVID Symptoms

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 96 (actual)
• Sponsor: Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 19 Years – 69 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

This cross-over study will assess a no added sugar diet, a restricted daily eating window, and one or two full day water fasts to determine if there is an effect on self-reported symptoms of Long Covid (PASC).

Detailed description

This remote study will use a cross-over design to test a diet change plus a 10-12 hour eating window (Treatment A) compared to a diet change, an 8-hour eating window, and one 36 or 60 hour fast per week (Treatment B). Both potential Treatment A and potential Treatment B are 4 weeks in duration. To be eligible, subjects must have a minimum of five common long COVID-19 symptoms. The fasting will limit food intake but not water intake. There will be a two-week run-in with weekly surveys of patient-reported symptoms and severity. The subjects will be randomly assigned to Group AB or to Group BA. Since the water fasts are at the beginning of the week (with symptoms surveyed at the end of the week) there is a 5-6 day washout and then a cross-over to the other treatment for Group BA. A Likert 0-4 scale is used to track the severity of 28 of the most common patient-reported symptoms each week. An additional 30 symptoms are also tracked. Subjects are asked to follow a no-added sugar diet for the entire 10 weeks of the study.

Conditions

• Long Covid19
• Long COVID

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Low sugar diet and 10-12 hour eating window	Low sugar diet and 10-12 hour eating window for four weeks
OTHER	Low sugar diet, 8 hour eating window and fasting	Low sugar diet, 8 hour eating window and a 36-60 hour fast once per week for four weeks.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-11-04
• Primary completion: 2024-07-01
• Completion: 2024-09-10
• First posted: 2024-01-19
• Last updated: 2025-07-24

Locations

2 sites across 1 country: United States