Antidepressant could save people from life-threatening sepsis, says research

February 14, 2019

Prior FDA Approval Could Accelerate Essential Treatment

An antidepressant drug used to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder could save people from life-threatening sepsis, according to a new study from the University of Virginia Medical School.

Researchers Dorian Rosen (left) and Alban Gaultier, PhD, have identified an antidepressant that could also stop deadly sepsis.

Sepsis is a leading cause of death worldwide. The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Infection call it "the body's extreme reaction to infection." The immune response of the body then becomes uncontrollable and the normally beneficial inflammation becomes harmful. The result can be tissue injury, organ failure or even death.

Sepsis is very dangerous. In the United States, 1.7 million people receive it each year and 270,000 people die. Once you have been diagnosed, you have a high risk of death. And there is no good treatment. Basically, we will try to keep you alive and watch you as much as possible. It is therefore clear that there is a critical need for treatment. "

Alban Gaultier, PhD, Researcher, AVU Neuroscience Department and Center for Brain

Gaultier and his team have identified a drug that could offer this treatment – and previous drug safety tests could speed up its use in hospitals across the country.

A simple solution for sepsis?

The researchers on UVA have studied a biological process little studied in our cells when they determined that it plays an important role in the regulation of inflammation. He started to study it partly because there are already drugs that can affect the players.

"The inflammation, for the most part, is fine. It's when it becomes uncontrollable that we have to modulate it, "said Gaultier. "The inflammation is a very precisely controlled reaction. When we need it and we have too much, it is a problem, but when we do not have enough, it is also a problem. "

To evaluate the potential of a drug, the antidepressant fluvoxamine, in the fight against sepsis, the Gaultier team tested it in a mouse model of the disease. Only 9% mice receiving fluvoxamine died, compared with 62 percent untreated mice.

While the drug will need to be tested on people to determine its effectiveness in the fight against human sepsis, previous tests to determine its safety should accelerate this process.

Gaultier hypothesizes that the same biological process could be targeted to generate beneficial inflammation when needed, as in immunocompromised individuals. "By inhibiting the receptor, we could activate the inflammation under conditions where the patient has no adequate inflammatory response," he said.

He plans to continue his research, including testing this hypothesis.