Aethlon Medical’s Hemopurifier shows potential efficacy in long COVID

Aethlon Medical (AEMD) announced the 20 November 2025 publication of a pre-clinical study in the pre-print online archive bioRxiv, simultaneously been submitted for consideration to a peer-reviewed journal. Long COVID refers to persistent symptoms following acute COVID-19 infection. These symptoms – including fatigue, post-exertional malaise, shortness of breath, chest pain, and cognitive difficulties such as “brain fog” – may last for weeks or months after the initial illness. Long COVID is estimated to affect between 44 and 48 million people in the U.S. alone with symptoms lasting a year. No treatment has proven effective. Extracellular vesicles, or EVs, nanoparticles 50-500nm in diameter, released from all cell types and involved in cell-to-cell communication, have been implicated in the pathogenesis of Long COVID. Aethlon Medical’s Hemopurifier is an investigational extracorporeal device designed to bind and remove harmful EVs from the blood through a combination of plasma separation, size exclusion and binding to a proprietary affinity resin containing the plant lectin Galanthus nivalis agglutinin, or GNA, previously found to bind to the sugar mannose. The Hemopurifier has previously been shown to remove EVs and decrease microRNAs in a patient with severe acute COVID-19 infection. Plasma of those with Long COVID contained elevated levels of both large and small EVs. Removal of small EVs by the GNA affinity resin correlated with mannose positive large EVs indicating the same glycan target for removal by the Hemopurifier was present in both populations.