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The antidepressant drug fluvoxamine – better known by the brand name Luvox – may help prevent serious illness in COVID-19 patients who are not yet hospitalized, according to a new study.
The study included 152 patients infected with mild to moderate COVID-19. Of these, 80 took fluvoxamine and 72 took a placebo for 15 days.
At the end of this period, none of the patients taking the drug had seen their infection progress to serious illness, compared with six (8.3%) of the patients who had taken the placebo, according to researchers at Washington University School. of Medicine in St.. Louis.
“Patients who took fluvoxamine did not develop severe breathing difficulties or did not need to be hospitalized for lung function problems,” said first author Dr Eric Lenze, professor of psychiatry .
“Most of the experimental treatments for COVID-19 are aimed at the sickest patients, but it’s also important to find therapies that prevent patients from getting sick enough to require supplemental oxygen or to have to go to hospital. ‘hospital. Our study suggests that fluvoxamine may help fill this niche, ”Lenze noted in an academic press release.
Fluvoxamine – widely used to treat depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social anxiety disorder – is a type of medicine called a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). This class of drugs also includes drugs such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Celexa.
But unlike other SSRIs, fluvoxamine has a strong interaction with a protein called the sigma-1 receptor, which helps regulate the body’s inflammatory response.
“There are several ways this drug could help patients with COVID-19, but we believe it likely interacts with the sigma-1 receptor to reduce the production of inflammatory molecules,” the lead author explained. study, Dr. Angela Reiersen, partner. professor of psychiatry.
“Previous research has shown that fluvoxamine can reduce inflammation in animal models of sepsis, and it can do something similar in our patients,” she said in the statement.
By reducing inflammation, fluvoxamine may prevent an overactive immune response in COVID-19 patients. This, in turn, may reduce their risk of serious illness and death, Reiersen said.
“Our goal is to help patients who are initially well enough to be at home and to prevent them from getting sick enough to be hospitalized,” said Dr Caline Mattar, assistant professor of medicine in the Division, in the statement. infectious diseases. “What we have seen so far suggests that fluvoxamine may be an important tool in achieving this goal.”
Dr Amesh Adalja is a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. He was not involved in the study, but said the research was “notable not only for its positive result – we desperately need a drug that will keep COVID patients from being discharged from the hospital – but also because of the way it happened.
But Adalja stressed that a larger trial is needed “to see if the promising results hold.”
The researchers said they plan to start such a study in the coming weeks and that it will include patients from all over the United States.
The preliminary study was published online Nov. 12 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
More information
To learn more about COVID-19, see the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
SOURCES: Amesh Adalja, MD, principal investigator, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Baltimore; Washington University at St. Louis, press release, November 12, 2020
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