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@allette3939

Great question. I have not taken ritonavir alone because I strongly suspect that my autoimmunity is the result of a severe norovirus I had in adolescence. My most prominent symptoms are gastrointestinal. Noroviruses, as I understand it, are related to, or similar to, coronaviruses. For this reason, I suspect both parts of Paxlovid work well for me. Researchers know that noroviruses can cause autoimmune disorders. What I don’t understand is WHY it’s taken so long for them to figure out that antivirals plus boosters like ritonavir for HIV work well for other autoimmune disorders. I guess because AI disorders mostly affect women? If autoimmunity led predominately to erectile dysfunction, this would have handled 50 years ago.

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Replies to "Great question. I have not taken ritonavir alone because I strongly suspect that my autoimmunity is..."

A lot of scientific research isn't really planned, just dumb luck. The story I heard was that the drug that became Viagra was developed in the hope that it would treat angina. They were doing a clinical trial on angina patients and realized that these old guys liked the drug much more than could be explained by its (non) effect on their angina. The patients had to tell the researchers what it actually did.

Hopefully you guys telling the researchers and drug company that paxlovid helps your autoimmune symptoms will bring about a similar explosion of research activity. Lord knows there are enough people with autoimmune problems that they should be able to make money from it.