Worldwide, researchers are trying to find out drugs that can treat the deadly coronavirus. While vaccines offer some protection against COVID-19, we need medications for those who have contracted the virus.
A new large clinical trial has suggested that researchers are getting somewhere near to finding an effective drug, according to Vox.
In the randomized clinical trial, researchers at McMaster University examined eight different COVID-19 treatments against a control group to figure out what works. And they found one drug that showed a great promise, called fluvoxamine.
Sold under the brand Luvox, fluvoxamine is an antidepressant that belongs to the class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). It is used primarily for the treatment of major depressive disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already found the drug to be safe and is cheap to produce as a generic drug.
The researchers found that fluvoxamine showed promise at reducing hospitalization for COVID-19 patients.
The study was conducted on more than 3,000 patients, with 800 in the fluvoxamine group. It was found that patients who were given fluvoxamine within a few days after testing positive for the virus were 31% less likely to get hospitalized and similarly less likely to need mechanical ventilation.
The study’s co-author Prof. Edward Mills told Vox Staff Writer Kelsey Piper, “This is a huge finding. The game changers are things we already had in the cupboards.”
Fluvoxamine is one of the inexpensive antidepressants, which has already been approved by the FDA for the treatment of OCD.
The researchers said that while more research is needed, the findings from this trial might already start changing how we treat COVID-19.
In the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Angela Reiersen, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, told her colleagues that fluvoxamine might help patients with COVID-19.
Dr. Eric Lenze, a leading clinical researcher at Washington University, agreed with Dr. Reiersen and said they should test it with a randomized controlled trial.
They recruited and treated 152 COVID-19 patients who were divided into two groups – one received fluvoxamine and the other a placebo. None of the patients in the fluvoxamine group had met the study’s threshold for respiratory difficulties, while six from the placebo group had.
Dr. Reiersen told Piper, “What I think is the most supported mechanism is an anti-inflammatory effect. Fluvoxamine can reduce the level of these chemicals called cytokines, which are involved in inflammation, so you’d get less damage in the lungs.” The article was originally published on Vox.
