Although people are vaccinated, one researcher says effective treatment could save lives in the meantime or help deal with vaccine-resistant variants.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Entrance to the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, April 14, 2020. Researchers at the U. are enrolling COVID-19 patients for a new study of a potential treatment.
A decades-old antidepressant can keep the coronavirus from causing serious illness – and the University of Utah is enrolling patients in a study to confirm whether it works.
The drug, fluvoxamine, is an early selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor – a common type of antidepressant, similar to Prozac or Zoloft – developed in the 1980s.
But Dr. Adam Spivak, an infectious disease professor, said Thursday, “There is a lot of research to suggest that it works as a very strong anti-inflammatory.”
That’s important because severe cases of COVID-19 are likely related to inflammation caused by uncontrolled immune responses that the virus triggers, Spivak said.
Over the past year, researchers have conducted trials of drugs with anti-inflammatory effects, from ibuprofen to the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
“We have a lot of anti-inflammatories on the shelf, from Motrin and Tylenol to … drugs that we use for specific cancers,” Spivak said. “There has been a very rapid series of studies on various anti-inflammatory drugs to address severe COVID.”
So far, only one of those drugs, a steroid called dexamethasone, has “really worked” and has been recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the treatment of coronavirus.
But researchers at Washington University in St. Louis completed the first trials with fluvoxamine in the fall and found that none of the patients using it required hospital care – compared to 8% of the coronavirus patients taking the placebo, Spivak said.
The drug has the same cellular mechanism as hydroxychloroquine, which then President Donald Trump cited as a “ panacea ” early on in the pandemic – but later turned out to be ineffective and potentially dangerous in treating the coronavirus.
That cellular mechanism is about 20 times more powerful in fluvoxamine than in hydroxychloroquine, Spivak said.
Now, the U. is partnering with Washington University to enroll Utah coronavirus patients for a follow-up study. Researchers are looking for people who recently tested positive for COVID-19 and developed symptoms within six days, who are at risk for serious illness, and who have not received a coronavirus vaccine.
Spivak acknowledged that with increasing vaccinations and decreasing cases, it may seem a little late for effective coronavirus treatment. But with the virus still spreading and mutating, he said, it’s important to be ready for a possible vaccine-resistant variant.
“People still get COVID, and they still will until we get enough people vaccinated,” he said.