Fluvoxamine: Cheap antidepressant shows promise against COVID-19

Fluvoxamine, an inexpensive antidepressant, might help keep patients with COVID-19 from developing severe disease, according to a new study published in The Lancet Global Health Wednesday.

Researchers in Brazil recruited nearly 1,500 COVID-19 patients at high risk for complications and randomly assigned half of them to receive fluvoxamine by mouth for 10 days. Everyone received standard COVID-19 treatments. Over the next month, 11% of the fluvoxamine group needed at least six hours of emergency care or were hospitalized, compared to 16% of patients who did not get the drug, and fewer fluvoxamine patients died, the researchers.

The researchers suspect the drug is helping by limiting the ability of the virus to cause inflammation. However, more research is needed to determine the impact of fluvoxamine because “composite outcomes” – where a variety of results are lumped together for analysis – are unreliable, according to an editorial by Otavio Berwanger of Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein in Sao Paulo.