SALT LAKE CITY – A drug used as an antidepressant has now also helped patients with COVID-19 to recover from the virus, small studies have found.
Researchers at the University of Utah Health believe the drug works and are now investigating with a larger study to confirm the remarkable results of two previous tests.
The generic drug, fluvoxamine, was developed 40 years ago as an antidepressant, mainly to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is safe, it costs just $ 0.60 a pill and shows great promise.
“We need a drug that will prevent people from getting sick when they get COVID, and that’s what we expect fluvoxamine to do,” said Dr. Adam Spivak, assistant professor in the Infectious Diseases Division at the University of Utah Health.
For a year, since the start of the pandemic, researchers have tried to find this pill. Spivak said that fluvoxamine could be that treatment.
“This is a big gap in our arsenal,” he said. “We spent a lot of time thinking about vaccines. We would love to prevent the disease. But people are still taking COVID, and will still do it until we vaccinate enough people. ”
After a year of learning about the virus, researchers now believe that it is the human response to the virus, not the virus itself, that makes people so sick.
“There is a huge inflammatory response that makes people sick and takes them to the hospital,” said Spivak.
Could a 40-year-old antidepressant be a possible treatment for COVID-19?
The researchers found that the drug fluvoxamine appears to prevent some of the complications of the disease and make hospitalization and the need for supplemental oxygen less likely. https://t.co/fHhASCk7wd
– Washington University in St. Louis (@WUSTL) March 19, 2021
They think that fluvoxamine targets the inflammatory response because it has anti-inflammatory properties. That’s why psychiatrists at the University of Washington in St. Louis decided to test fluvoxamine in patients with COVID-19.
In one test, they gave fluvoxamine to 150 people with confirmed COVID-19. Among those who received the placebo, 8% ended up in the hospital.
Spivak said: “Eighty people took fluvoxamine, and none of those people got sick. They all recovered.”
By 10 days, people who had taken fluvoxamine had largely recovered.
–Dr. Adam Spivak, assistant professor, Infectious Diseases Division, University of Utah Health
There were similar results in November in a real-world test after an outbreak of COVID-19 on a racetrack in California.
“Around 10 days, people who took fluvoxamine recovered widely,” said Spivak.
The University of Utah researchers are part of a larger, multi-site study called Stop COVID 2, with a goal of enrolling 1,100 people. You must be at least 30 years old and have confirmed COVID-19 with symptoms that started in the last six days.
“We hope to do this as soon as possible so that we can confirm that fluvoxamine works and have it in our arsenal, or know that it does not,” said Spivak.
The researchers conducted the entire study remotely, sending medicines and supplies to the participants. It doesn’t matter where you live to participate.
Related Links
Related stories
Jed Boal