Blood Levels Matter for effective treatments. One size doesn’t fit all.
A 35-year-old woman struggling with 18 months of post-COVID depression, exhaustion, recurrent fevers, and persistent skin infections found relief with lithium treatment. But here’s what made the difference: monitoring her blood levels.
At a serum level of 1.14 mmol/L symptoms improved significantly. When the level dropped to 0.8 mmol/L symptoms returned
" Lithium dramatically improved patient’s mood from a “3” out of 10 best [with 7 being considered euthymic] to “7–8” at a serum level of 1.14 mmol/L. Her excessive daytime fatigue decreased from “severe and life altering” to “mild-to-moderate”. When we attempted to lower the lithium dose to achieve a serum level of 0.8 mmol/L, patient’s mood declined from “7–8” to “3–6”, and when dose was again increased to a serum level of ≥ 1.0, mood again returned to “7–8”."
This case illustrates a critical principle in personalized medicine: the same dose doesn’t work for everyone. Genetic differences, metabolism, and individual physiology mean that therapeutic monitoring—not just the drug itself—is what drives real outcomes.
Lithium’s potential for post-COVID and neuroinflammation is promising, but low-dose approaches alone haven’t shown broad benefits in trials. Higher doses with closer monitoring might be the key for some patients.
