BENFOTIAMINE

What is benfotiamine?

Benfotiamine is derived from thiamine or vitamin B1. While vitamin B1 is water-soluble, benfotiamine is fat-soluble and can be naturally found in roasted garlic [^[1]].

What does benfotiamine do in the body?

Benfotiamine is a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compound relevant to several diseases. Benfotiamine has helped prevent complications from diabetes as well as inflammatory complications of diabetes. Conditions that benefited from benfotiamine include a type of eye inflammation called uveitis and endotoxemia. Endotoxemia is involved not only in diabetes but also in other chronic diseases. It may contribute to low-grade inflammation that affects people with diabetes, dysregulating inflammation and triggering weight gain and diabetes [^[1], ^[2]].

How can benfotiamine help alleviate certain Long COVID symptoms and/or pathophysiology? 

Relevant to COVID-19, benfotiamine could potentially reduce neurological complications by reducing amyloid beta deposition and tau activity, which are markers of neurodegeneration. Inflammatory complications that can be improved with benfotiamine include reductions in the activation of immune cells such as cytokines, as well as genes and molecular cascades upregulated during inflammation. Metabolic activity can be improved with benfotiamine through improvements and efficiencies gained in the Krebs cycle. Overall, for COVID-19, these effects reduce immune cell activation and decrease the cytokine storm. They also reduce oxidative stress and other complications associated with diabetes for COVID-19 patients. While it is unclear which of these improvements occur during the acute versus chronic phase of COVID-19, benfotiamine is a promising compound in this realm [^[3]].