An antidepressant reduced the need for hospitalization among adults at high risk with COVID-19 in a study looking at existing drugs that can be reused to treat the virus.
The researchers tested pills used to treat depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder because they were known to reduce inflammation and showed promise in small studies.
The team has shared the findings with the US National Institutes of Health, which publishes treatment guidelines, and they hope to get a recommendation from the World Health Organization.
“If the World Health Organization recommended this, you would see it being taken up more widely,” said study co-author Dr. Edward Mills of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, adding that many poorer countries have the drug readily available. Hopefully this will “save many lives”.
The researchers note that the drug, fluvoxamine, costs $4 for a course of COVID-19 treatment. In comparison, intravenous antibody treatments cost about $2,000, and Merck’s experimental antiviral pills for COVID-19 cost about $700 per cycle.
Some experts expect different treatments to eventually be used in combination to combat the coronavirus.
The researchers tested antidepressants on nearly 1,500 Brazilians who had recently contracted the coronavirus and were at risk of developing severe illness from other health problems, such as diabetes.
About half of them took antidepressants at home for 10 days, while the rest took dummy pills. The team tracked patients for four weeks to see who was hospitalized or spent a long time in the emergency room.
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In the drug group, only 11 percent required hospitalization or an extended stay in the emergency room, compared to 16 percent of those who took a dummy pill.
The results, published Wednesday in the Lancet Global Health journal, were so strong that independent experts monitoring the study recommended it be halted early because the results were clear.
Questions remain about the best doses, whether lower-risk patients might also benefit, and whether these depression pills should be combined with other treatments.
The larger project looked at eight existing drugs to see if they could work against the pandemic virus. The project is still testing a hepatitis drug, but all other drugs, including metformin, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, have not worked.
Source: Medical Express
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