An antidepressant that costs just $ 4, but according to a study published in recent days in the journal The Lancet Global Health it would have the ability to reduce the chances for high-risk Covid-19 patients to be hospitalized. A group of Brazilian researchers have long examined the drug, fluvoxamine, coming to the conclusion that it would be able to suppress the inflammation triggered in the body by the coronavirus infection. Not only would the drug, compared to the more expensive monoclonal antibodies, not only provide an inexpensive alternative, but it is well tolerated and already tested.
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In reality, it is not the first time that fluvoxamine has been considered to tackle the coronavirus because a possible therapy has been identified in the drug since the beginning of the pandemic, but no study has been as large or convincing as the one published by the group of researchers. Brazilians.
The research started in June 2020 and went on until August 2021 and involved 1,500 patients (58% women) affected by coronavirus, most of whom were not vaccinated and therefore faced a greater risk, due to the age or other pre-existing health problems. 11% of those who had taken the antidepressant drug were hospitalized, while the percentage rose to 16% among those who had not taken the drug: which means that fluvoxamine had reduced the risk of hospitalization by a third. The risk was even lower for patients who took at least 80% of the prescribed doses of fluvoxamine. Only one patient who went through much of the course of treatment died. While among those who had not taken the drug, there were 12 deaths.
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Otavio Berwanger, one of the doctors on the team said the study “strongly suggests that fluvoxamine is an effective, safe, inexpensive and relatively well tolerated option” for the treatment of Covid-19 patients. However, he pointed out that there are some unanswered questions: more research is needed both on the correct use of the treatment and to understand what effect the drug may have on low-risk patients or vaccinated people. It is also not clear why fluvoxamine appears to be effective against Covid: the researchers initially chose to analyze it for its anti-inflammatory properties, it was the positive results of the analysis that now convinced them to move forward in the research.
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“It’s really good,” said the doctor David Boulware, a University of Minnesota infectious disease scientist who worked on a smaller study of fluvoxamine in Covid patients in California. He added, “It is not an expensive and brand new drug. Furthermore, its safety profile is already known to us ”.
Therefore, if larger studies are needed to evaluate the use of fluvoxamine for Covid, it is already expected that the new findings will increase the popularity of the drug in less wealthy countries.
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